Assessment of the Type D Personality Construct in the Korean Population: A Validation Study of the Korean DS14

Abstract

This study aimed to develop a Korean version of the Type D Personality Scale-14 (DS14) and evaluate the psychiatric symptomatology of Korean cardiac patients with Type D personality. Healthy control (n = 954), patients with a coronary heart disease (n = 111) and patients with hypertension and no heart disease (n = 292) were recruited. All three groups completed DS14, the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire (EPQ), the state subscale of Spielberger State and Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI-S), the Center for Epidemiologic Studies Short Depression Scale (CESD), and the General Health Questionnaire (GHQ). The Korean DS14 was internally consistent and stable over time. 27% of the subjects were classified as Type D. Type D individuals had significantly higher mean scores on the STAI-S, CESD, and GHQ compared to non-Type D subjects in each group. The Korean DS14 was a valid and reliable tool for identifying Type D personality. The general population and cardiovascular patients with Type D personality showed higher rate of depression, anxiety and psychological distress regarding their health. Therefore, identifying Type D personality is important in clinical research and practice in chronic medical disorders, especially cardiovascular disease, in Korea.

Six year stability of Type-D personality in a German cohort of cardiac patients

“…The reliability estimates that we observed for the retest reliabilities of SI and NA scores over a time period of 6 years were lower than those reported for shorter time periods [2,[4][5][6][7][8] and corresponded to the values reported for a sample of patients assessed before and 6 months after cardiac surgery [9]. Following Shrout [31], who proposed that reliability coefficients between .41 and .60 be labeled as fair and coefficients between .61 and .80 as moderate, the sizes of the reliability coefficients can be classified as fair to moderate.…”

“…Other studies that observed no change in NA and SI scores over time [4,6,8,9] Notes. a -d = (mean at t2-mean at t1)/pooled standard deviation; b -age dichotomized at the median; all r's p b .001; * p b .05; ** p b .01; *** p b .001.…”

“…Most previous studies used the 14-item Type-D scale (DS14) and computed the test-retest reliabilities of the NA and SI subdimensions as measures of stability. Within an interval of 4 weeks to 3 months, moderate to high test-retest reliabilities were reported for samples of cardiac patients and students (NA: Pearson product-moment correlation coefficients between time points, r tt = .72-.85; Intraclass correlation coefficients, ICC = .76-.92; SI: r tt = .63-.83; ICC = .74-.91) [2,[4][5][6][7][8]. A study with a longer interval of 6 months found only moderate testretest correlations of r tt = .61 and r tt = .59 for NA and SI, respectively [9].…”

“…For a population sample of healthy twins, intraclass correlations between 0.72 and 0.83 were reported over a time interval of 9 years [10]. With regard to the absolute scores of NA and SI, only one study showed significant changes [4][5][6]8,9]. Also, the Type-D classification remained relatively stable in samples of coronary artery disease (CAD) patients across 6 and 18 months, respectively [5,11], but changed in 28% of the Type-D patients between pre-surgery and 6 months post-surgery (bypass or valve surgery) [9].…”

A preliminary psychometric evaluation of the type D personality construct in Turkish hemodialysis patients

“…The validity and reliability of the DS_14 has been established in various countries, among patients with cardiac diseases (7)(8)(9)(10)(11) and chronic pain (12), and healthy individuals (13).…”