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Personality and stress
Published in Tony Cassidy, Stress, Cognition and Health, 2023
Measurement of TAB tends to be either by questionnaire or structured interview. Three popular questionnaire measures used are the Jenkins Activity Survey (JAS) (Jenkins, Zyzanski & Rosenman, 1979), the Bortner Rating Scale (BRS) (Bortner, 1969) and the Framingham Type A Scale (FTAS) (Haynes et al., 1978). The Structured Interview (SI) technique currently used was developed by Rosenman (1978) and includes monitoring the style of behaviour exhibited during the interview. Interviews tend to be provocative to increase the likelihood of observing Type A behaviour, in particular displays of overt hostility, an important factor in interpreting outcomes. Studies suggest that the SI method is the most valid and that the JAS correlates more highly with the SI than do any of the other questionnaire methods. The lack of agreement between measures and the observation that some measures, particularly the FTAS, correlate highly with neuroticism is a problem in the area. For a full review of measures, see Bennett and Carroll (1989).
Differences in menopausal symptoms and coping strategies according to personality in Japanese nurses
Published in Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, 2019
Kazuyo Matsuzaki, Toshiyuki Yasui, Sumika Matsui, Miwa Fukuoka, Hirokazu Uemura
We designed a self-administered questionnaire consisting of four parts that took about 20 minutes to complete. The first part of the questionnaire consisted of questions on socio-demographic factors, lifestyle and medical histories, the height and weight for calculating a body mass index (BMI), marital status, menstrual and menopausal status, medical treatments, the current smoking habit, alcohol drinking habit and the living environment. The menstrual and menopausal statuses were divided into premenopause (a regular menstrual cycle during the past 12 months), perimenopause (an irregular menstruation during the past 12 months) and postmenopause (no menstruation during the past 12 months). The second part of the questionnaire consisted of questions on menopausal symptoms assessed by using Greene’s climacteric scale, which measures the extent to which an individual is affected by menopausal symptoms. The scale lists 21 symptoms, and the participants registered their response by indicating ‘not at all’, ‘a little’, ‘quite a bit’ or ‘extremely’. The scale is constructed so that symptoms measure psychological aspects, somatic conditions and vasomotor symptoms and assess the loss of sexual interest (Greene 1998). The third part of the questionnaire consisted of questions regarding type A personality. The type A behaviour pattern was assessed by an abbreviated set of 12 questions developed for the Japanese population (Maeda 1991). It has been shown that the concordance rate for diagnosis with the Jenkins Activity Survey (JAS), which is widely used in the world, was 82.8% and that the correlation of scores with questionnaires in JAS was good (r = 0.7185) (Maeda 1985). The 12 questions were related to a busy daily life, feeling a sense of time urgency, being enthusiastic, having a difficulty in changing one’s mind, perfectionism, a confidence in oneself, easily feeling tense, punctual with punctuality, feeling irritated or angry, unyielding, having aggressive temper and being competitive. Two, 1 and 0 points were assigned, respectively, to the responses of ‘always agree’, ‘occasionally agree’ and ‘hardly agree’ for the questionnaire items. The points were doubled for three of 12 items. A total score of 17 or more was defined as a type A personality, whilst a score of 16 or less was defined as a non-type A personality (Maeda 1991). The fourth part of the questionnaire consisted of questions on coping with menopausal symptoms. We asked about the presence of menopausal symptoms and when present, were they coping with them. Questions were asked about the coping strategies used, including the improvement of lifestyle, appropriate exercise, change in mood, dietary supplements, the use of Kampo and HRT. We also asked whether they had an understanding of the causes and treatments for menopausal symptoms. Information was generated from self-administered yes/no responses to the closed-end questions.