Multiscale Dissociation Inventory (MDI)

Note: Copyright of the MDI has reverted back to John Briere, Ph.D. This measure can no longer be purchased from PAR, although citation remains the same.

The MDI is currently available at no charge to qualified professional researchers, or thesis/dissertation students supervised by a licensed psychologist. For those who meet this condition, and wish to received the MDI test packet, please email John Briere with a request. The MDI is currently not available for clinical use.

The MDI is a 30-item self-report test of dissociative symptomatology. It is fully standardized and normed, and measures six different type of dissociative response. The scales of the MDI (with their associated alpha reliabilities in the general population) are:

  • Disengagement (alpha = .83)
  • Depersonalization (alpha = .90)
  • Derealization (alpha = .91)
  • Emotional Constriction/Numbing (alpha = .94)
  • Memory Disturbance (alpha = .74)
  • Identity Dissociation (alpha = .75)
  • Total Dissociation Score (alpha = .96)

The MDI is normed and standardized on 444 trauma-exposed individuals from the general population, and validated in clinical, community, and university samples. Scores on this measure can be converted to T-scores that allow for empirically-based clinical interpretation of clients’ actual level of dissociative disturbance.

The MDI has been found to have good psychometric qualities in both the normative and validation samples.  Data on over 1,300 clinical and nonclinical individuals indicates that the MDI does, in fact, tap relatively independent types of dissociative responses that correlate, as expected, with the MDI scales (Briere, Weathers, & Runtz, 2005).  A raw Identity Dissociation scale score of 15 or higher was found to identify 93% of those with diagnosis of Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID) and 92% of those with no diagnosis of DID in a combined clinical/community sample. Each MDI symptom item is rated according to its frequency of occurrence over the prior month, using a scale ranging from 1 (never) to 5 (very often).

The MDI requires approximately 10-15 minutes to complete for all but the most clinically impaired individuals and usually can be scored and profiled in less than 5 minutes.


Select Publications on (or using) the MDI to 2007

Briere, J., Scott, C., & Weathers, F.W. (2005).  Peritraumatic and persistent dissociation in the presumed etiology of PTSD.  American Journal of Psychiatry, 162, 2295-2301.

Briere, J. (2002).  Multiscale Dissociation Inventory.  Odessa, Florida: Psychological Assessment Resources.

Briere, J., & Runtz, M.R. (2002). The Inventory of Altered Self-Capacities (IASC):  A standardized measure of identity, affect regulation, and relationship disturbance.  Assessment, 9, 230-239.

Briere, J., Weathers, F.W., & Runtz, M. (2005).  Is dissociation a multidimensional construct?  Data from the Multiscale Dissociation Inventory.  Journal of Traumatic Stress, 18, 221-231.

Dietrich, A.M. (2003).  Characteristics of child maltreatment, psychological dissociation, and somatoform dissociation of Canadian inmates. Journal of Trauma and Dissociation, 4, 81-100.

Dietrich, A.m. (2007). Childhood maltreatment and revictimization: the role of affect dysregulation, interpersonal relatedness difficulties and posttraumatic stress disorder. Journal of Trauma and Dissociation, 8, 25-51.

Ginzburg, K., Koopman, C., Butler, L.D., Palesh, O.G., Kraemer, H.C., Classen, C.C., & Spiegel, D. (2006).  Evidence for a dissociative subtype of post-traumatic stress disorder among help-seeking childhood sexual abuse survivors. Journal of Trauma and Dissociation, 7, 7-27.