The Revised Life Problems Inventory-Undergraduate Form (R-LPI-U): A Confirmatory Factor Analysis and Validation Study

The Life Problems Inventory (LPI) is a widely adopted measure of symptomatology and emotion regulation skills related to borderline personality disorder (BPD) for clinical and general youth groups based on Linehan’s DBT framework. The Revised-LPI (R-LPI) was designed to advance the utility and scope of LPI by integrating the 5th central problem domain identified in DBT for adolescents and emerging adults (DBT-A), Teen Family Conflict . This study evaluated the application of the R-LPI to a general population of 844 undergraduate students (62.09% female; 23.0% White; 45.79% reporting English as a second language) called the R-LPI-U. Six of the 60 administered items showed weak loadings, low item-total associations, and pronounced floor effects in this general sample. These items were omitted from the 54-item R-LPI-U rather than removed from the 60-item full form of the R-LPI. Findings confirmed that the R-LPI-U showed a 5-factor hierarchical structure and measurement invariance across sex. The total and subscale scores of the R-LPI-U showed adequate reliability, criterion-related and discriminant validity. They also showed significant correlations with life satisfaction (negative) and psychological distress (positive). These findings provide preliminary support for the R-LPI-U as an adequate tool for research and program evaluation in undergraduate DBT-skill training contexts. Limitations and future directions are discussed, such as the need for a comparative validation study of the complete 60-item versus 54-item forms of the R-LPI in general versus clinical youth samples.