Validation of the Brazilian brief version of the temperament auto-questionnaire TEMPS-A: The brief TEMPS-Rio de Janeiro

• Published in: Journal of affective disorders 2011-11, Vol.134 (1), p.65-76
• Main Authors: Woodruff, Erica, Genaro, Larissa T, Landeira-Fernandez, Jesus, Cheniaux, Elie, Laks, Jerson, Jean-Louis, Girardin, Nardi, Antônio E, Versiani, Márcio C, Akiskal, Hagop S, Mendlowicz, Mauro V
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Adolescent; Adult; Adult and adolescent clinical studies; Affect; Aged; Anxiety - diagnosis; Anxiety - epidemiology; Anxiety - psychology; Anxiety disorders; Anxiety Disorders - diagnosis; Anxiety Disorders - psychology; Anxiety-Depression; Biological and medical sciences; Brazil; Brazilian people; Child; Cross-Cultural Comparison; Depression; Depression - diagnosis; Depression - epidemiology; Depression - psychology; Depressive Disorder - diagnosis; Depressive Disorder - psychology; Europe; Factor analysis; Factor Analysis, Statistical; Female; Humans; Internal consistency; Irritable Mood; Language; Male; Medical sciences; Mood disorders; Paris; Personality Inventory - statistics & numerical data; Physical symptoms; Psychiatry; Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry; Psychometrics - instrumentation; Psychometrics - statistics & numerical data; Psychopathology. Psychiatry; Reproducibility of Results; Students - psychology; Surveys and Questionnaires; Temperament; TEMPS-A; Turkey; Universities; Validation; Young Adult
• ISSN: 0165-0327; 1573-2517
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jad.2011.02.005

Abstract Background Over the last thirty years, Akiskal and collaborators have described and developed operationalized diagnostic criteria for five types of affective temperaments — cyclothymic, irritable, hyperthymic, depressive, and anxious. A 110-item, yes-or-no questionnaire, the Temperament Evaluation of Memphis, Pisa, Paris, and San Diego (TEMPS-A), was specifically developed for measuring temperamental variation. The TEMPS-A was translated into more than 25 languages and cross-culturally valid versions are now available in Italian, French, German, Japanese, Turkish, Arabic, Polish, Hungarian, Spanish and Portuguese. Recent studies in the US and in Europe, however, have suggested that shorter versions of TEMPS-A can be just as efficient as the full ones while potentially enhancing the compliance of respondents. The main objective of the present study was to validate a brief Brazilian Portuguese version of TEMPS-A (brief TEMPS-Rio de Janeiro). Methods Our main sample consisted of 997 undergraduate students (female = 72.6%) from seven different universities located in the city of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. An additional group of 167 healthy senior citizens (women = 83.8%) was recruited in senior community centers in the city of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. All participants were asked to complete the 110-item, Brazilian translation of the full version of the TEMPS-A. Results An exploratory factor analysis (PCA type 2, Varimax rotation) vying for a five-factor solution yielded mixed results, with cyclothymic traits, physical symptoms of anxiety and preoccupation with the well-being of a family member loading together on the first factor. When a forced six-factor solution was attempted, cyclothymic, irritable, hyperthymic, and depressive were delineated as predicted by the theory. The original generalized anxious temperament was split into two sharply delimited components, a “worrying” subscale and an abbreviated anxious subscale, which included physical symptoms of anxiety and concerns with the well-being of relatives. Based on the tripartite model of anxiety and depression, we proposed that the abridged anxious subscale, which includes physical symptoms of anxiety, represents the “true” generalized anxious temperament, while the “worrying” subscale corresponds to the “general distress factor”. The internal consistency of the six subscales thus identified was generally good, ranging from 0.67 (anxious subscale) to 0.81 (worrying subscale), with cyclothymic, irri