Reliability and validity of TEMPS-A in a Japanese non-clinical population: application to unipolar and bipolar depressives.
BACKGROUND
In Japan, TEMPS-A has gathered much attention, because Kraepelin's concepts on "fundamental states" of mood disorder and temperaments have been widely respected.


METHODS
TEMPS-A was translated into Japanese (and after the approval of the English back translation by H.S.A.), it was administered to 1391 non-clinical subjects, and 29 unipolar and 30 bipolar patients in remission. Of the non-clinical sample, 426 were readministered the instrument again in 1 month. A control group matched for gender and age was drawn from the non-clinical sample.


RESULTS
Regarding test-retest reliability, Spearman's coefficients for depressive, cyclothymic, hyperthymic, irritable and anxious temperaments were 0.79, 0.84, 0.87, 0.81 and 0.87, respectively; regarding internal consistency, Cronbach's alpha coefficients were 0.69, 0.84, 0.79, 0.83 and 0.87, respectively. The unipolar and bipolar groups showed significantly higher depressive, cyclothymic and anxious temperament scores than the control group. Curiously, the bipolar group showed significantly lower hyperthymic score than the control group; irritable temperament scores showed no significant differences. Depressive, cyclothymic, irritable and anxious temperament scores showed significant correlations with each other. Between the unipolar and bipolar groups, there was little difference regarding the temperament scores. Also the inter-temperament correlations showed the same pattern in the unipolar and bipolar groups.


CONCLUSIONS
The clinically well cohort was 70% male.


CONCLUSIONS
TEMPS-A showed a high reliability and validity (internal consistency) in a Japanese non-clinical sample. By and large, the hypothesized five temperament structure was upheld. Depressive, cyclothymic and anxious temperaments showed concurrent validity with mood disorder. Irritable temperament may represent a subtype of depressive, cyclothymic or anxious temperaments. There may be a temperamental commonality between unipolar and bipolar disorders. TEMPS-A will open new possibilities for international research on mood disorder and personality traits.
Matsumoto
Satoko
S
Department of Mental Health, School of Health Sciences, Faculty of Medicine, University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan.
Akiyama
Tsuyoshi
T
Tsuda
Hitoshi
H
Miyake
Yuko
Y
Kawamura
Yoshiya
Y
Noda
Toshie
T
Akiskal
Kareen K
KK
Akiskal
Hagop S
HS
D000328:Adult; D001714:Bipolar Disorder / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000523:psychology*; D003431:Cross-Cultural Comparison; D003865:Major Depressive Disorder / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000523:psychology*; D005260:Female; D005500:Follow-Up Studies; D006801:Humans; D007564:Japan; D007802:Language; D008297:Male; D010555:Personality Inventory / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D011594:Psychometrics / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D012016:Reference Values; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D013223:Statistics as Topic; D013694:Temperament