Introduction

T he Personality Assessment Inventory (PAI; Morey, 1991) is a 344-item multiscale self-report measure of constructs relevant for a wide range of psychological assessment applications. The PAI differs from other wellknown self-report multiscale inventories in several important ways that are largely a consequence of the construct validation approach to test construction (Cronbach & Meehl, 1955; Jackson, 1970; Loevinger, 1957) that guided PAI development. This approach combines theoretical and empirical procedures for selecting the constructs to be measured and items reflective of those constructs. One illustrative effect of this underlying philosophy is that PAI scales are clearly labeled with contemporary terms for constructs that are commonly used among practitioners regardless of their theoretical orientation. Other features of the PAI were designed to ease the administrative burden of the test, given the practical obstacles to lengthy assessment practices (Piotrowski & Belter, 1998). For instance, the PAI requires a lower reading level than similar inventories (Schinka & Borum, 1993) and benefits from relative brevity even though all of its scales have non-overlapping items.