The Type A behaviour pattern is alive and well—when not dissected: A reply

Psychological correlates of the Type A behaviour pattern in coronary angiography patients

“…In a study of normal subjects, Ray & Bozek (1980) reported a modified version of the JAS to be strongly related to the Jackson (1967) scales of dominance (r = 0.42), achievement orientation (r = 0.66) and sociability (r = 0-23), and claimed that these three variables accounted for almost half of the variance in the JAS. Jenkins & Zyzanski (1982) suggest that these findings may be largely attributable to the modifications which Ray & Bozek effected to the JAS, and cite evidence indicating that dominance and achievement account for less than 10 per cent of the variance in JAS scores. In a recent rejoinder to Jenkins & Zyzanski, Ray (1984) refuted the suggestion that the discrepant findings were attributable to conceptual differences with respect to Type A.…”

“…While acknowledging the growing body of evidence implicating Type A behaviour in the pathogenesis of CHD, reviewers of the Type A literature have consistently emphasized problems in accurately assessing Type A behaviour, and the fact that little is known about the relation of Type A to other personality and affective states and traits (Matteson & Ivancevich, 1981 ; Review Panel on Coronary-Prone Behavior, 1981 ; Bass, 1984). This paper examines these issues in relation to two popular questionnaire measures of Type A, namely the Jenkins Activity Survey (JAS) (Jenkins, Rosenman & Friedman, 1967;Jenkins, Zyzanski & Rosenman, 1979) and the Framingham Type A Scale (FTAS) (Haynes et af., 1978).…”

“…Paper-and-pencil tests have been developed in an attempt to provide more objective and efficient Type A assessment procedures. The first and most popular of these, the Jenkins Activity Survey (JAS), was developed from an item pool derived from the structured interview questions and from clinical experience (Jenkins, Rosenman & Friedman, 1967;Jenkins, Zyzanski & Rosenman, 1979). The JAS, as currently used in adult populations, is a reasonably long questionnaire which provides scores on a Type A index and three factor analytically derived subscales: Speed and Impatience, Job Involvement and Hard Driving.…”

Consistency and Variation Among Instruments Purporting to Measure the Type A Behavior Pattern

“…This, together with cross-cultural confirmations (10), has endowed it with good construct validity (14). Several self-report scales, notably the Jenkins Activity Survey (15), the Bortner Scale (16), the Framingham Scale (17), and the Vickers Scale (18) have been developed as alternatives to the SI; scales from existing psychometric inventories have been examined, either to establish independent relationships between "personality" and CHD or as validating criteria for the more specific measures of the TABP (14,19). Self-report measures tend, however, to correlate only modestly among themselves (14,19,20) and with the SI (20).…”

“…Several self-report scales, notably the Jenkins Activity Survey (15), the Bortner Scale (16), the Framingham Scale (17), and the Vickers Scale (18) have been developed as alternatives to the SI; scales from existing psychometric inventories have been examined, either to establish independent relationships between "personality" and CHD or as validating criteria for the more specific measures of the TABP (14,19). Self-report measures tend, however, to correlate only modestly among themselves (14,19,20) and with the SI (20). Moreover, although some (the Jenkins, Bortner, and Framingham instruments) are related to the incidence of CHD, the strength of associations matches or exceeds that for the SI only for some subgroups of studied populations (10).…”