Compulsive buying disorder clustering based on sex, age, onset and personality traits

Abstract

In spite of the revived interest in compulsive buying disorder (CBD), its classification into the contemporary nosologic systems continues to be debated, and scarce studies have addressed heterogeneity in the clinical phenotype through methodologies based on a person-centered approach. Objectives to identify empirical clusters of CBD employing personality traits, as well as patients' sex, age and the age of CBD onset as indicators. Methods an agglomerative hierarchical clustering method defining a combination of the Schwarz Bayesian Information Criterion and log-likelihood was used. Results three clusters were identified in a sample of n = 110 patients attending a specialized CBD unit a) "ma..