Personality types of women attending an STD clinic: correlation with keeping first review appointments.

Abstract

and the tDepartment ofGenitourinary Medicine, Royal Victoria Hospital, Northern Ireland SuMMARY One hundred and eighty new women patients attending a sexually transmitted disease (STD) clinic answered the Eysenck personality questionnaire (EPQ)' which measures psychoticism, extraversion, neuroticism, and a tendency to "fake good". These personality scores were correlated with the patients' attendance or non-attendance for their first review appointments. The results showed that the mean psychoticism scale scores of the 41 non-attenders was significantly higher than that of the 139 who kept their first appointment. This relation was confirmed using point biserial correlations. The mean scores of non-attenders on the other three EPQ scales were not significantly different from those of attenders, and none of the correlations between the other EPQ scales and this behavioural criterion was significant. The psychoticism scale is tentatively recommended for identifying women patients who may need special counselling about the importance of keeping their first review appointment.An important school of thought in psychology assumes that all behavioural differences reflect personality differences.2 This paper reports the results of a study designed to examine the relation between the personalities of new women patients attending a sexually transmitted disease (STD) clinic and their non-attendance or attendance for their first review appointment.The Eysenck personality questionnaire (EPQ) was used to assess personality for the following reasons.Firstly, it is a comprehensive measure of the three main personality dimensions described by Eysenck. These are (1) psychoticism, which could be termed tough mindedness (traits shown are solitariness, troublesomeness, cruelty, unfeelingness and insensitivity, hostility and aggression, and predisposition to psychotic psychiatric illness, psychopathic personality disorder, drug or alcohol addiction, or criminality); (2) extraversion (extraverted people are sociable, impulsive, lively, and lacking social inhibition); and (3) neuroticism, which refers to emotionality (traits include strong but labile and conflicting emotions, anxiety, being easily upset, and having a predisposiAddress for reprints: Dr R D Maw, Department of Genitourinary Medicine, Royal Victoria Hospital, Grosvenor Road, Belfast BT12 6BA, Northern Ireland Accepted for publication 16 January 1989 tion to neurotic psychiatric illness). The EPQ was also designed to detect the tendency to "fake good", that is, to give answers that are perceived as being socially acceptable rather than true, and as being orthodox, conventional, and law abiding. Secondly, the EPQ was used because independent research has confirmed the satisfactoriness of its psychometric characteristics.4 Thirdly, it is easy to administer and score and can be answered in about 15 minutes only, which would be essential if such a questionnaire were to be useful in a busy STD clinic.Attendance for follow up after the first visit to an STD clinic is of great ...