Browsing by Author "Rantakallio, Pekka"

Objectives: During The Cardiovascular Risk in Young Finns (LASERI) -longitudinal study, a large amount of psychological traits have been measured. A temperament or personality inventory has not been previously made with a Finnish data. The goals of this study are 1) to find the orthogonal factors, that best simplify the variance of the psychological traits measured in the LASERI-study, 2) to create a prototype of a personality inventory that measures these newfound factors using an inductive approach, 3) to study the properties of the created prototype as well as the connections between it and depression, and 4) to develop ways to improve the prototype. Methods: A large amount of factor analyses were made to the questions of eleven psychological inventories used on 2879 test subjects in the LASERI-study in the years 1997 – 2012. The factors present most often were chosen as the structure of the prototype. Occurrence rate and reliability were used to limit the amount of questions. The structure of the prototype was studied using explorative factor analysis, its reliability using Cronbach’s alpha and split-half method, the social variables using variance analysis, and the connections between the prototype and depression using logistic regression. Results and conclusions: The Nine Factor Inventory (9FI), the created prototype of a personality meter consists of nine factors that have good reliabilities and psychological interpretations. The structure is a fine way to simplify the variance of the psychological traits measured in the LASERI-study. The test subjects got different results from 9FI depending on their sex, age, and the point of the measurement. The amount of common variance between 9FI and experienced depression was 6,8 %. A plethora of ideas how to better create a personality meter or how to improve 9FI were made.