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

Abstract

UNLABELLED: 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 CB..