Behavior Problems Inventory

The Behavior Problems Inventory (BPI) asks someone who knows a person well — a parent, teacher, or direct care staff member — to report on challenging behaviors in people with intellectual and developmental disabilities, including autism. It covers three kinds: self-injurious behavior, stereotyped behavior, and aggressive or destructive behavior.

Each behavior is rated twice, once for how often it happens and once for how much of a problem it is. The original BPI-01 uses 52 items; a 30-item short form is also available, and the two correlate closely. Ratings cover the past two months by default. There are deliberately no norms or cut-off scores: the authors argue self-injury and aggression are clinical concerns regardless of how mild or rare, and that identical totals can mean very different things.

• Original BPI-1 Paper, Rojahn et al. (2001)

Licensing Notes: The BPI may be used free of charge for personal, unfunded research — student research and independent service providers, for example. Clinics, schools, foundations, and grant-funded investigators using it routinely are charged $200 to reproduce 50 copies from the electronic prototype, or $400 for unlimited copies, which includes the right to digitally replicate it and integrate it into a non-public electronic records system.

Learn More: Two versions are posted free for download in many languages. The BPI-01 (52 items) is available in 20 languages; the BPI-S (30 items) in 13. The choice between them is length versus detail — data from the two correlate very highly.