Assessment of Affective temperaments in a Tunisian non-clinical population.

Background: Temperament Evaluation of Memphis, Pisa, Paris and San Diego-Auto-questionnaire (TEMPS-A) is frequently used to assess affective temperaments in clinical and non clinical populations.

Aims: To assess the psychometric properties of the Tunisian TEMPS-A in a non-clinical population and to explore the gender and age effects on affective temperaments.

Methods: TEMPS-A is a self-administered questionnaire evaluating hyperthymic, depressive, cyclothymic, irritable and anxious temperaments. Its Tunisian version was administered to 840 employees of the University Hospital of Monastir. Among them, 547 completed the questionnaire (response rate=65%).

Results: The internal consistency and the test-retest reliability were good in general except for the depressive temperament. The factor analysis confirmed the five factors structure of the questionnaire with an overlap for the fifth dimension between depressive and anxious items corresponding to an anxio-depressive dimension. The study of correlations showed that the depressive, cyclothymic, irritable and anxious dimensions of TEMPS-A were strongly related to each other (P<0.001). Men had significantly higher scores than women in the hyperthymic temperament while women had significantly higher scores in the anxious, cyclothymic and depressive temperaments. For the age, the scores of the cyclothymic temperament decreased while the scores of the anxious temperament increased (P<0.05).

Conclusion: The Tunisian version of the TEMPS-A has good psychometric properties with an overlap between depressive and anxious items. Moreover, the scores of affective temperaments differed by age and gender. Subsequent studies with larger samples should be realized to verify these results.