The initial interview is an important aspect of development of and intervention in tertiary student learning. Yet there are no published interview schedules available to psychologists working in the area of tertiary academic skills development This paper presents an interview schedule for use with individual tertiary students seeking assistance with learning and academic skills development. Some preliminary comments about the application of the schedule are also offered.

Objective: The assessment of the personality status of Adolf Hitler using a structured interview schedule, the Personality Assessment Schedule, with two informants, one a psychiatrist with an interest in psychohistory and the other a historian with special knowledge of the Third Reich and Weimar Republic. Method: The Personality Assessment Schedule was given in two forms to the two informants at different times; on each occasion Hitler was assessed as he was in 1937. Results: There was considerable discrepancy between the ratings of the two informants, the historian recording less-personality disturbance in all areas of function, although correlations between the two sets of ratings were relatively high (R1 0.5-0.6), with rater bias accounting for the differences in severity. Both informants regarded Hitler as having a dissocial personality disorder (using the new ICD-10 criteria), but the psychiatrist's rating also scored the diagnosis of paranoid and histrionic personality disorders. Conclusions: Interview schedules which use informants to assess personality disorder can be of value in examining the personality status of historical figures.

Objective: To compare the perceived accuracy of diagnostic information derived from psychiatric patients and a range of other informants using a schedule for assessing personality disorders (Personality Assessment Schedule). Method: The Personality Assessment Schedule includes a rating of reliability of the information obtained from whatever source. A record was made of these reliability scores in 405 patients with psychiatric disorder; 146 with both subjects and other informants and 259 with the informant only, and analysed using non-parametric statistics. Results: There was significant variation in the distribution of scores among the four psychiatrists who rated 232 of the interviews with informants, suggesting that inter-individual differences are paramount in deciding who is a reliable informant. Nevertheless, the views of other informants when they were spouses or cohabitees were judged to be more accurate than those of other relatives or acquaintances. No differences were found in the perceived reliability of data from subjects and informants when both were interviewed separately. Conclusions: Subjects and informants are judged to be equally reliable in giving assessments of personality status but the informants who have the closest relationship to subjects, spouses and cohabitees, are judged superior to informants of more distant immediate relationship in the accuracy of their information about personality status.