Cross-Cultural Comparison of Personality: New Zealand Children and English Children

The recently published Junior Eysenck Personality Questionnaire contains scales to measure the personality dimensions of Extraversion, Neuroticism, and Psychoticism, as well as a Lie (dissimulation) factor. In view of the large volume of standardization data cross-cultural studies of personality structure are possible. The questionnaire was accordingly administered to a sample of New Zealand boys (N = 644) and girls (N = 672), aged from 7 to 15 yr., and the New Zealand data compared with the results reported in the manual for samples of English children. The pattern of correlations between scales was similar for both samples, the correlations tending to be quite low. The majority of items loaded on their respective factors, and these factors could be clearly identified with Eysenck's personality dimensions. Factor comparisons indicated a high degree of factor similarity for boys and girls. Internal consistency reliabilities were quite satisfactory for both sexes and closely resembled those reported in the manual. Sex and age trends were also consistent with the English results. Of some interest is the fact that New Zealand children obtained higher Psychoticism scores than did English children; they also obtained lower Lie scores.