Tehran University Medical Journal

Background: This Study aimed to validate the temperament and character inventory (TCI) in an Iranian sample of men and women with different ages. TCI contains subscales designed to measure seven different personality traits and characteristics.

Materials and Methods: In the first step, subjects (n=1212) completed the questionnaire. In the second step, to examine the reliability of the questionnaire, 101 randomly chosen subjects were re-tested one to two months after the first test. Also, in order to examine the validity of the questionnaire, 100 subjects were interviewed by two psychologists using a checklist based on the Cloninger&aposs biological theory of personality. The interviewers, who were blind to the subjects&apos scores on the seven subscales, rated each subject for the seven traits and characteristics on a 10-point rating scale (from 1 to 10).

Results & Conclusion: The results showed normative data for the subscales novelty seeking (NS), harm avoidance (HA), reward dependence (RD), persistence (Per), self directiveness (SD), cooperation (Co) and self transcendence (ST) for different gender and age classes. Correlations between the scores and ratings of the test and re-test revealed significant coefficients, confirming reliability for all subscales. A good internal consistency was found for each subscale. The results also showed no significant correlations higher than 0.40 among NS, HA, Per and RD the temperament subscales were independent from each other. The only significant correlation, higher than 0.40, among the character subscales was between SD and Co. Applied and clinical implication of the present findings will be discussed.