Validation of a Short Chinese (45-Item) TEMPS-A in a Non- Clinical Chinese Population

Abstract Objectives: We previously validated the 110-item Chinese TEMPS-A in a relatively large Chinese population, on the basis of which this study was aimed at validating a short Chinese TEMPS-A in order to facilitate its wide use in time-limited settings such as out-patient clinics. Method: We extracted 63 items from the 110-item TEMPS-A with factor loading ≧ 0.35. The reconstructed 63-item Chinese TEMPS-A was administered to 879 clinically-well Chinese Han population aged 16-60 years without a history of mental disorders. Results: A principal component analysis with Varimax rotation found that 45 out of the 63 items loaded onto five factors, namely cyclothymic, hyperthymic, anxious, irritable, and depressive factors. The Cronbach alphas coefficients were 0.86 (cyclothymic), 0.80 (hyperthymic), 0.57 (anxious),0.55 (irritable), and 0.62 (depressive). Most of the affective temperaments were significantly correlated with one another. The males scored significantly higher on the hyperthymic and irritable subscales than did the females. Finally, the frequency of the dominant temperaments defined as two standard deviations above the mean) was the highest for the depressive temperament (6.0%), followed by the cyclothymic, anxious (4.2%), irritable (2.8%), and hyperthymic (0%) temperaments. Conclusions: Our data suggest that the 45-item Chinese TEMPS-A is psychometrically comparable to its full version. Further refinement (i.e combining all the somatic symptom items) warrants future investigation.