The short-form revised Eysenck personality questionnaire - MedIND

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The short-form revised Eysenck personality questionnaire: A Hindi edition (EPQRS-H) A B S T R A C T Trayambak Tiwari, Anju L. Singh, Indramani L. Singh Cognitive Science Laboratory, Department of Psychology, Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi - 221005, (U.P.), India

Address for correspondence: Dr. Trayambak Tiwari, Department of Psychology, Cognitive Science Laboratory, Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi - 221 005, (UP), India. E-mail: trayambakbhu@gmail. com

Background: There is a growing consensus about the validity of human personality traits as important dispositions toward feelings and behaviors (Matthews, Deary, & Whiteman, 2003). Materials and Methods: Here we examine the reliability of the Hindi translation of the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire-Revised Short Form (EPQR-S; Eysenck, Eysenck, & Barrett, 1985), which consists of 48 items that assess neuroticism, extraversion, psychoticism, and lying. The questionnaire was first translated into Hindi and then back translated. Subsequently, it was administered to 202 students (78 men and 124 women) from Banaras Hindu University. The internal consistency of the scale was evaluated. Results: The findings provide satisfactory psychometric properties of the extraversion, neuroticism and lie scales. The psychoticism scale, however, was found to be less satisfactory. Conclusion: It can be proposed that due to satisfactory internal consistency scores, the EPQRS-H is a reliable scale for the measurement of various personality traits. Keywords: EPQR - Short, Extraversion, Neuroticism, Psychoticism, Lie score DOI: 10.4103/0972-6748.57854

I

n its preliminary version, the Eysenck personality theory involved neuroticism-stability and extraversionintroversion dimensions; subsequently, the psychoticism dimension was added to the theory (Lewis et al., 2002). As the extraversion dimension represents sociality and impulsivity, individuals in this dimension were defined as enjoying social interactions, energetic, and preferring social situations to loneliness. It was proposed that the neuroticism dimension indicated emotional instability and reactiveness, and that individuals who score high on this dimension tend to be anxious, depressive, overly emotional, shy, and have low self-esteem. The psychoticism dimension highlights more bizarre personality characteristics, such as being distant, cold, insensitive, absurd, and unable to empathize with others (Eysenck & Eysenck, 1975).

This increase in length can be accounted for by the introduction of an additional dimension of personality within Eysenck’s scheme (Eysenck & Eysenck, 1976) and by the psychometric principle that greater length enhances reliability (Lord & Novick, 1968). Neuroticism and extraversion, especially, appear in most trait models of personality (Matthews et al., 2003). An important part of the validation of any trait-based model of personality and its associated measurement instrument is to investigate its applicability to other cultures. This tends to be done in two ways: emic and etic. Emic research typically uses the lexicon of the local culture to investigate the structure and content of the personality-related terms (Saucier & Goldberg, 2001). Etic research applies personality measures devised in one culture to new cultures and asks whether they show the same psychometric structure and reliability and validity (McCrae, 2001). A large amount of etic research has been completed on the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire. The research has been done mostly on the original 90-item EPQ. Generally, its psychometric structure has been well-reproduced in at least 34 countries (Barrett & Eysenck, 1984; Barrett, Petrides, Eysenck, & Eysenck, 1998).

Since the development of Eysenck personality theory, various measures were developed in order to assess the various personality traits. One of the consequences of this process has been a progressive increase in their length. The early Maudsley Medical Questionnaire (MMQ) contains 40 items (Eysenck, 1952), the Maudsley Personality Inventory (MPI) contains 48 items (Eysenck, 1959), the Eysenck Personality Inventory (EPI) contains 57 items (Eysenck & Eysenck, 1964a), the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire (EPQ) contains 90 items (Eysenck & Eysenck, 1975) and the Revised Eysenck Personality Questionnaire (EPQR) contains 100 items (Eysenck, Eysenck, & Barrett, 1985). Industrial Psychiatry Journal

Although all these questionnaires were reliable and valid there are, however, some practical disadvantages in using long tests. In particular, they caused certain clinical application problems due to their length. Therefore, the need for 27

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Tiwari, et al.: Hindi Eysenck personality questionnaire

shorter personality scales resulted in shorter versions of the mentioned instruments. One of these shorter personality scales is the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire Revised - Short Form (EPQR-S; Eysenck et al., 1985). EPQR-S includes 48 items and 4 subscales: Extraversion (12 items), Neuroticism (12 items), Psychoticism (12 items), and Lie (12 items). The lie subscale is a control scale in which the whole scale is tested for social desirability bias. Eysenck et al. (1985) reported reliabilities for males and females respectively of 0.84 and 0.80 for neuroticism, 0.88 and 0.84 for extraversion, 0.62 and 0.61 for psychoticism, and 0.77 and 0.73 for the lie scale. The EPQR-S has now been used quite widely (Aleixo & Norris, 2000; Blagrove & Akehurst, 2001; Chan & Joseph, 2000; Chivers & Blagrove, 1999; Creed, Muller, & Machin, 2001; Francis, 1999; Francis & Wilcox, 1998; Glicksohn & Bozna, 2000; Glicksohn & Golan, 2001; Halamandaris & Power, 1999; Linton & Wiener, 2001; Martin & Kirkaldy, 1998; Robbins, Francis & Rutledge,1997).

Materials and Methods Sample

Two hundred two (78 men and 124 women) Hindi speaking students studying in the Banaras Hindu University completed the Hindi translation of the EPQR-S. The age of the respondents ranged from 18 to 30 years with mean age of 22.27 years and SD of 2.37. Tool Eysenck Personality Questionnaire Revised-Short Form (EPQR-S)

EPQR-Short (Eysenck, Eysenck & Barrett, 1985) is a selfreported questionnaire. It has 48 items, 12 for each of the traits of neuroticism, extraversion, and psychoticism, and 12 for the lie scale. Each question has a binary response, ‘yes’ or ‘no’. Each dichotomous item was scored 1 or 0, and each scale had a maximum possible score of 12 and minimum of zero. Procedure

In a cross-cultural study, Francis, Brown, and Philipchalk (1992) compared the psychometric properties of the EPQR-S in four English-speaking countries among a total of 685 undergraduate students, including 59 men and 153 women in England, 57 men and 92 women in Canada, 51 men and 81 women in the USA and 53 men and 139 women in Australia. According to this study the short form extraversion scale achieved alpha coefficients of 0.78, 0.83, 0.85 and 0.87 in the four samples. The short form neuroticism scale achieved alpha coefficients of 0.79, 0.80, 0.81 and 0.83 in the four samples. The lie scale performed less well than the extraversion and neuroticism scales, but proved to be adequate. The short form lie scale achieved alpha coefficients of 0.65, 0.66, 0.70 and 0.71. However, for the psychoticism scale, alpha coefficients were very low (0.33-0.52).

For the present study the questionnaire was translated into Hindi by a bilingual Indian national and then backtranslated into English by a second bilingual Indian national in order to test for inaccuracies and ambiguities. Where there were inconsistencies in the retranslated English version, both translators were consulted as to the best possible solution. This content-based checking provided clear support for scoring the neuroticism, extraversion and lie scale items as suggested by Eysenck et al. (1985). After the content-based analysis the Hindi version of EPQR-S (here after referred as EPQRS-H) it was administered on all the participants (N=202) in order to examine its psychometric properties. Statistical analysis

The internal consistency of the four subscales of EPQRS-H was calculated using Chronbach’s alpha method (Cronbach, 1951).

While the EPI, EPQ and EPQR were originally developed in England and then extended to other English-speaking areas, the cross-cultural extension of this field of personality research quickly led to the translation and testing of the instruments in non-English speaking environments (Barrett & Eysenck, 1984; Eysenck & Eysenck, 1983). For example, Francis and associates (Francis, Lewis, & Ziebertz, 2006) have developed the German edition of the EPQR-S. Similarly, Ivkovic et al. (2007) have developed and checked psychometric properties the Croatian edition of the EPQR-S.

RESULTS Table 1 presents the Corrected Item-Total Correlations for each of the four subscales of the EPQRS-H (i.e., extraversion, neuroticism, psychoticism and the lie scale). The reliability of the extraversion, neuroticism, psychoticism and lie score subscales were found to be 0.766; 0.772; 0.238; 0.624, respectively. The results indicated that none of the items were psychometrically poor. The corrected item-total correlation ranged from 0.201 to 0.538 for extraversion, from 0.196 to 0.556 for neuroticism, from 0.109 to 0.449 for lie scale and from 20.020 to 0.284 for psychoticism subscale of EPQRS-H. Moreover, none of the ‘alpha-if item deleted’ values exceeded the overall

Against this background, the aim of the present study was to examine the psychometric properties of the Hindi translation of the EPQR-S for Indian Hindi speaking college going adult population. Jan-Jun 2009 | Vol 18 | Issue 1

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Tiwari, et al.: Hindi Eysenck personality questionnaire

Tabel 1: Results of item analysis for the four subscales of the EPQRS-H Item numbera 3 7 11 15 19 23 27 32 36 41 44 48

1 5 9 13 17 21 25 30 34 38 42 46

4

8 12

16

Items of the four subscales of the EPQRS-H

Corrected item-total Cronbach’s a if item correlations deleted

Extraversion (Cronbach’s α coefficient = 0.766) Are you a talkative person? D;k vki ckrwuh gSa\ Are you rather lively? D;k vki okdÃ ftUnkfny gSa\ Do you enjoy meeting new people? D;k u;s y¨xä ls feyus esa vkid¨ ÂqÓh g¨rh gS\ Can you usually let yourself go and enjoy yourself at a lively party? D;k lkeU;r% fdlh t¨Óhyh ikVhZ esa vki Âqydj vkuan mBk ldrs gSa\ Do you usually take the initiative in making new friends? D;k vki izk;% u;s fe= cukus esa igy djrs gSa\ Can you easily get some life into a rather dull party? D;k vki visÕkÑr uhjl ikVhZ esa vklkuh ls dqN tku Mky ldrs gSa\ Do you tend to keep in the background on social occasions? D;k vki lkekftd voljä ij Lo;a d¨ ijns ds ihNs gh jÂuk pkgrs gSa\ Do you like mixing with people? D;k vki nwljs y¨xä ls Äqyukµfeyuk ilan djrs gSa\ Do you like plenty of bustle and excitement around you? D;k vki vius vklµikl Âwc gypy v©j j©ud pkgrs gSa\ Are you mostly quiet when you are with other people? nwljs y¨xä ds lkÉ jgus ij] d;k vki T;knkrj pqi jgrs gSa\ Do other people think of you as being very lively? D;k vkid¨ nwljs y¨x cgqr ftUnkfny le>rs gSa\ Can you get a party going? D;k vki fdlh ikVhZ d¨ lfdz; cuk;s jÂ ldrs gSa\ Neuroticism (Cronbach’s α coefficient =0.772) Does your mood often go up and down? D;k vkidh eu%fLFkfr izk;% curh fcxM+rh gS\ Do you ever feel ‘just miserable’ for no reason? dÒh fdlh otg ds fcuk gh D;k vki nq%Âh eglwl djrs gSa\ Are you an irritable person? D;k vki fpM+fpM+s O;fDr gSa\ Are your feelings easily hurt? D;k vkidh Òkoukvä d¨ vklkuh ls Bsl yx tkrh gS\ Do you often feel ‘fed-up’? D;k vki vDlj mcu eglwl djrs gSa\ Would you call yourself a nervous person? D;k vki Lo;a d¨ ,d vÌhj O;fDr ds :i esa Lohdkj djsaxs\ Are you a worrier? D;k vki ijsÓku jgk djrs gSa\ Would you call yourself tense or ‘highly strung’? D;k vki Lo;a d¨ rukoxzLr ;k vfr mRrstukÓhy O;fDr dgsaxs\ Do you worry too long after an embarrassing experience? fdlh yTtktud vuqÒo ds ckn D;k vki cgqr yEcs le; rd fpfUrr jgrs gSa\ Do you suffer from ‘nerves’? D;k vki O;kdqy g¨ tkrs gSa\ Do you often feel lonely? D;k vki izk;% vdsykiu eglwl djrs gSa\ Are you often troubled about feelings of guilt? D;k vki izk;% vijkÌ Òkouk ls nqÂh jgrs gSa\ Lie scale (Cronbach’s α coefficient =0.624) If you say you will do something, do you always keep your promise no matter how inconvenient it might be? ;fn vki fdlh dke d¨ djus dk opu nsrs gSa r¨ fdruh Òh vlqfoÌkvä ds ckotwn D;k vki gesÓk viuk oknk fuÒkrs gSa\ Were you ever greedy by helping yourself to more than your share of anything? D;k vius fgLls ls T;knk fdlh pht d¨ ikus dh lpsLV ykylk dÒh vki esa e©atwn Éh\ Have you every blamed someone for doing something you knew was really your fault? D;k fdlh vU; O;fDr d¨ vkius dÒh ,sls dke ds fy, n¨Ôh Bgjk;k gS t¨ okLro esa vkidh gh xyrh dh otg ls gqvk Ék\ Are all your habits good and desirable ones? D;k vkidh lÒh vknrsa vPNh ,oa okaNuh; gSa\

.394

.751

.396

.750

.201

.766

.472

.741

.319

.760

.528

.734

.290

.761

.330

.758

.385

.752

.457

.743

.485

.740

.538

.733

.437

.753

.366

.761

.391

.759

.196

.780

.510

.747

.308

.768

.556

.739

.516

.745

.364

.762

.474

.749

.529

.743

.324

.764

.342

.595

.265

.605

.402

.581

.265

.604

(Contd...) Industrial Psychiatry Journal

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Tiwari, et al.: Hindi Eysenck personality questionnaire Item numbera

Items of the four subscales of the EPQRS-H

20

Have you ever taken anything (even a pin or button) that belonged to someone else? D;k vkius d¨b ,slh pht ¼;gƒ rd fd fiu ;k cVu Òh½ dÒh ys yh gS t¨ fdlh v©j dh Éh\ Have you ever broken or lost something belonging to someone else? D;k vkius d¨Ã ,slh pht dÒh r¨M+ Mkyh ;k Â¨ nh Éh t¨ fdlh nwljs dh jgh g¨\ Have you ever said anything bad or nasty about anyone? ;k vkius fdlh ds foÔ; esa d¨Ã Òh cqjh ;k v’yhy ckr dÒh dgh gS\ As a child were you every cheeky to your parents? D;k dÒh vki cPpä dh rjg vius ekrkµfirk ls