Personality Assessment Inventory (PAI)

Enhance your psychological toolkit with our PAI workshop, designed for psychologists at any career stage. From foundational interpretation to advanced applications, gain practical experience and refine your strategies for clinical diagnosis, treatment planning and screening for psychopathology.

The Personality Assessment Inventory (PAI) is a self-administered, objective test of personality and psychopathology. It is widely used clinically in Australia and is one of the critical tests that trainee psychologists must be familiar with for the National Psychology Exam. Our dual professional development workshop is designed to address the needs of psychologists with varying levels of experience.

The day-long workshop begins with a review of the key features and elements of the PAI suitable for those who have limited exposure or who are looking to refresh their skills. While this is intended to provide you with foundational knowledge and interpretative strategies to elevate your skills in deciphering the complexities of psychopathology, advanced content will also be presented in relation to the application of the test in the Australian context.  Additionally, a structural approach to interpreting and reporting the findings of the PAI will be discussed.

Advanced or more contemporary content will also be reviewed particularly with respect to the suite of measures that have become available since the release of the PAI Plus. These additional measures which include scales for assessing validity, suicide and violence risk, need for hospitalisation, and the DSM-5 alternate model for personality disorders will be critically evaluated for the roles they may play in PAI interpretation. Some additional measures from the research literature will also be reviewed.

Learning Outcomes

For those attending for foundation or refresher purposes, this workshop will introduce participants to the PAI and discuss its structure and application with clients. The workshop will cover basic interpretive strategy including determining the validity of a profile, clinical scale elevations, and the use of configural interpretations and indices to enhance the role and interpretation of the test. Attendees will acquire a more critical and nuanced understanding of the roles the test plays in their clinical practices. In addition to reviewing the additional measures and approaches that have been recently introduced, critical evaluation of their incremental validity will assist in determining which would be appropriate for adoption or exclusion.

At the end of this workshop participants will be able to:

• Describe the structure of the PAI.
• Understand how to determine the validity of a PAI profile and its implications for interpretation.
• Address normal range personality issues such as self-perception, interpersonal style, perception of environment, and treatment motivation.
• Interpret clinical scale elevations.
• Enhance evaluations of response bias, risk of harm to self and others, and treatment considerations through the use of indices and statistical algorithms.
• Understand the relationship between the PAI and the role it can play in assisting in diagnosis.
• Understand and undertake more detailed evaluations of protocol validity including inconsistency, defensiveness, and over-reporting.
• Apply appropriate additional measures for the assessment of risk of harm to self and others and the assessment of personality disorders using the alternate dimensional model.
• Implement a structural approach to PAI interpretation and reporting and employ a hierarchical approach to personality assessment that places the PAI in its broader clinical context.
• Understand the cautions and limitations in using profile analysis with the PAI.

Eligibility

The day-long workshop is suitable for provisional or registered psychologists who have had limited exposure to the PAI or those who are looking to refresh their skills. Also suitable for board approved supervisors looking to increase their knowledge of the PAI for supervisory purposes.

Our Trainer

Assoc Prof Graeme Senior

Dr Graeme Senior is an associate lecturer in the Faculty of Psychology, Counselling and Psychotherapy at The Cairnmillar Institute (CMI) teaching Advanced Assessment for Clinical Psychologists. Dr Senior is a US-trained psychologist who has been working as a clinician, academic, and researcher in Australia since 1993.

Much of the consultancy and clinical work he has done as an academic and private practitioner is specific to addressing clinical, forensic, and neuropsychological issues with psychological test data. He has established Australian normative and medicolegal base-rate data for many tests including the PAI, MMPI-2 and MMPI-2-RF and it is this research along with his clinical and supervision experiences that informs the presentations and workshops he conducts.

Important Information

This workshop is subject to receiving a minimum number of enrolments. In the case we are unable to deliver the workshop, participants may choose to reschedule to an alternative date or receive a refund.