Assessing mental health in Vietnam with the Personality Assessment Inventory: Cross-cultural comparability

ABSTRACT This study examined the cross-cultural comparability of the Personality Assessment Inventory (PAI: Morey, 1991) in Vietnam, employing a sample of 128 nonclinical Vietnamese native speakers and 53 bilingual Vietnamese/English speakers. The Vietnamese version demonstrated comparable internal consistency to that obtained in the original PAI US standardization sample, with Cronbach's αs ranging from .41 to .94 and similar trends in reliability across scales. Exploratory factor analysis yielded factors replicating components commonly obtained in prior studies of the PAI. Vietnamese-English bilingual subjects who completed both the Vietnamese adaption and the original PAI showed few differences in their responses across versions. The Vietnamese sample generally scored higher than the US standardization sample on the majority of PAI scales; however, none of these mean scores were elevated to levels of clinical significance. Covariance analyses suggested that a negative response style drove many of these differences, potentially indicating cultural differences in approaches to self-reporting emotional distress. Methodological limitations, potential mediating factors, and future research directions are discussed.