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Distribution and gender effects of the subscales of a German version of the temperament autoquestionnaire briefTEMPS-M in a university student population

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Abstract

Background: This paper examines the distribution of the temperamental characteristics and gender effects of a new autoquestionnaire developed by Akiskal et al. (TEMPS-A) in its German briefTEMPS-M version. Methods: As described in a companion article [J. Affect. Disord. 85 (2005), 53, this issue], based on a study population of 1056 students of the Westfälische-Wilhelms-Universität in Münster, Germany, we constructed the briefTEMPS-M. In the present paper we report on the basic descriptive statistics of the five subscales of the briefTEMPS (depressive, cyclothymic, hyperthymic, irritable, and anxious), as well as gender differences. Results: Except for the hyperthymic, these subscales are capable of representing the full range of temperament in a sample of German students. Characteristics of the distribution (skewness, kurtosis) of the subscales are well in acceptable limits. We found higher depressive, cyclothymic, and anxious, as well as lower hyperthymic, temperament values in women as compared to men. Cut-off scores to determine extreme groups are provided. To render our results comparable to a similar study using the interview version of the TEMPS-I in an Italian student population [J. Affect. Disord. 47 (1998) 1; J. Affect. Disord. 51 (1998) 7], we computed the rates for dominant temperaments based on the z scores +2 S.D., and obtained the following: depressive, 4.7%; cyclothymic, 4.7%; hyperthymic, 2.1%; irritable, 4.0%; and anxious, 4.2%. Conclusions: The briefTEMPS-M is a potentially valuable scale to quickly assess temperament in research, clinical and normal samples.

Introduction

Temperament refers to the enduring constitutional core of behavior and affectivity. Kraepelin (and after him Kretschmer) believed in a continuum between affective disorder and temperament: “Die leichteren und leichtesten Formen gehen ganz unmerklich in gewisse persönliche Eigentümlichkeiten über”. (The weaker and weakest forms [of manic-depressive insanity] imperceptibly pass into certain personal peculiarities, Kraepelin, 1904.)

Akiskal et al., 1998, Akiskal et al., 2005 have developed the TEMPS-A, a new autoquestionnaire for the study of temperament based on the foregoing classic conceptualization. Another German questionnaire version has been shown to have a satisfactory reliability and concurrent validity against the neo FFI (Blöink et al., 2005, this issue). However, they also reported problematic difficulties of a relatively high proportion of items on each scale. It is likely that this leads to unfavorable characteristics of the distribution of values on the respective subscales of the TEMPS-A. Their sample was too small to do full justice to the TEMPS-A. Nevertheless, Blöink et al. reported significant differences between male and female participants on three of the subscales of the long 110-item version of TEMPS-A.

In this issue of the journal, we presented data on the construction of the brief German version of the TEMPS-A (Erfurth et al., 2005). The purpose of this companion paper is to further describe the five subscales of this new measure including distribution, cut-off scores for extreme groups, and gender effects.

Section snippets

Methods

About 1056 students of the Westfälische-Wilhelms-Universität in Münster, Germany, filled out the long version of the TEMPS questionnaire. Details describing the sample and the procedure are given by Erfurth et al. (2005) in this issue. On the whole, the questions were answered very conscientiously. There were not more than 2–3% missing answers for any questions resulting in excellent completion rates for each of the subscales (n=1019 for the hyperthymic, n=1021 for the irritable, n=1022 for the

Results

Histograms of the five subscales of the briefTEMPS-M are shown in Figure 1, Figure 2, Figure 3, Figure 4, Figure 5. As a five-point Likert-type scale was used, the minimal sum score for each subscale is 7×1=7; the highest value is 7×5=35. Means, medians, S.D.s, the 16th and 84th percentiles, estimates of skewness and kurtosis for the five subscales subdivided according to gender are presented in Table 1. Table 2 shows that female participants had higher values on the depressive, the

Discussion

In this paper we described in detail the five subscales of the briefTEMPS-M. Histograms show, that with the exception of the hyperthymic, the full range of the subscales were used in our student sample. Furthermore, skewness and kurtosis values for the five subscales are in a well acceptable range for both men and women. These findings overall are very encouraging, since all degrees of temperament should be found and distributed evenly in the general population.

We were able to confirm gender

References (19)

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