Reliability and validity of the Japanese version of the tridimensional personality questionnaire among university students

The Tridimensional Personality Questionnaire (TPQ) is a self-rating questionnaire, based on a general biosocial theory, for the clinical description and classification of both normal and abnormal personality variants. It was translated into Japanese and administered with the General Health Questionnaire (GHQ) and the 10-item version of the Social Desirability Scale (SDS) to 450 university students on two occasions 2 months apart. Pearson Product-Moment Correlation Coefficients and κ-coefficients between TPQ scale scores for the two occasions were significantly high, as were Cronbach's α-coefficients of TPQ scales and subcategories at the first wave. Correlations between the TPQ scale score and GHQ and SDS scores were negligible. The TPQ thus appears to have test-retest reliability and content validity among a Japanese student population; it is uninfluenced by psychiatric morbidity or social desirability.