BACKGROUND: Borderline Personality Features Scale for Children (BPFS-C) has been widely applied to evaluate the children’s borderline personality features worldwide, whereas it is rarely utilized in China. This study was designed to assess the feasibility, reliability, and validity of the Chinese-version BPFS-C in a multi-school-based sample of Chinese children and adolescents.

MATERIAL AND METHODS: A total of 964 students were recruited from 3 senior high schools, 1 junior middle school, and 1 elementary school in Shenyang, Capital city of Liaoning Province, China. We used the Chinese-version BPFS-C, Children’s Depression Inventory (CDI), McLean Screening Instrument for Borderline Personality Disorder (MSI-BPD), University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) Loneliness Scale, 12-item Aggression Questionnaire (AQ-12), the subscales of obsessive-compulsive symptom and interpersonal sensitivity of Symptom Check List-90 (SCL-90), and Basic Empathy Scale (BES).

RESULTS: Sixty-eight students were re-tested 3 weeks after the initial test. Internal consistency and reliability of the Chinese-version BPFS-C was calculated as 0.853, and the reliability of re-test was 0.824. The BPFS-C score was moderately correlated with the scores of CDI, MSI-BPD, UCLA, AQ-12, and SCL-90, with a correlation coefficient of 0.590–0.676. The mean BPFS-C score in boys (55.857±12.620) was significantly lower than that (59.460±13.866) in girls (P<0.001).

CONCLUSIONS: BPFS-C is a reliable and effective scale, which can be used for evaluating borderline personality features in children and adolescents in China.

Keywords: borderline personality disorder, Child, Abandoned, Reproducibility of Results, Adolescent, Aggression, Child, Child, Preschool, Emotions, ethnicity, Loneliness, Longitudinal Studies, Minority Groups, Personality, Personality Inventory, Psychiatric Status Rating Scales, Psychometrics, Surveys and Questionnaires