Background & Objectives: As a characteristic pattern of one's behavior, personality, in a broad sense, includes thoughts, feelings, and motivations. In recent years, based on theoretical models, different types of personalities have been introduced, and many tools have been developed to assess personality traits and disorders. Some of these tools are the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire (EPQ), the Cattle's 16 Personality Factor (16PF) questionnaire, the Neo-Personality Questionnaire (extraversion, conscientiousness, consent, neuroticism, and emotional stability), and the PID-5 Personality Questionnaire. Coolidge (2012) developed an inventory based on Horney's theory which consisted of three dimensions of obedience (altruism, need for relationship, self-humiliation), isolation-avoidance (need for loneliness, avoidance, self-sufficiency), and aggression (destructive, power-hungry, risk-taking). Each of these dimensions includes three subscales. The questionnaire examines how people communicate with each other. Therefore, it seems that the Horney-Coolidge Tridimensional Inventory (HTCI) can be used to examine this relationship and other research topics in more detail. This study aimed to evaluate the factor structure and psychometric properties of HCTI.
Methods: In terms of purpose, this study was a tool development with methodologic research. Using the available sampling method, we selected study samples from the students of the Islamic Azad University of Tehran in the academic year of 2020-2021. HCTI (Coolidge, 2012) and the Iranian Addiction Potential Scale (IAPS) (Zargar et al., 2006) were used for data collection. First, HCTI was once translated from English to Persian by psychologists and then by an English language teaching specialist. The final version of the questionnaire was prepared by comparing two texts (the original English questionnaire and the translated Persian version). Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, the study data were collected online. The students were told that the purpose of completing the questionnaire was to collect information for research work, and their information would be kept confidential. A total of 450 questionnaires were filled out and returned. Then, questionnaires with incomplete answers were excluded. Finally, 387 questionnaires were used for data analysis. The reliability of the questionnaire was assessed by performing a retest and checking internal consistency. In this regard, 50 subjects were asked to answer the questionnaire again after one month. Also, the validity of the questionnaire was assessed by conducting the content and face validity. Confirmatory factor analysis was performed to examine the factor structure (construct validity) of the questionnaire and convergent validity to check the correlation with the addiction tendency questionnaire. Data analysis was performed in SPSS22 software and Mplus 8.3 software. The significance level was set at p=0.01.
Results: Content validity was assessed by asking the opinions of psychologists about the items of the questionnaire, and the range of content validity ratio (CVR) was examined for each question, which was between 0.80 and 1. Comparing the values with the table of contents for each question (content validity ratio more than 0.63) showed the validity of items in the questionnaire. The results of the content validity index (CVI) of each question were more than 0.79, which showed their simplicity, specificity, clarity, and appropriateness. Except for questions 26, 42, and 47, which reached the desired value with the changes made in the text of the question and the repetition of the previous steps. The face validity was performed qualitatively by asking the opinions of ten students, and the ambiguity and difficulty level of the questions were removed again. The Horney-Coolidge Tridimensional Personality Inventory structure was confirmed in the Iranian sample. The fit indices of WRMR, RMSEA, CFI, and TLI were 0.83, 0.059, 0.927, and 0.912, respectively. The Cronbach α values (internal consistency) of the obedient, aggressive, and isolated-distant personality dimensions were 0.783, 0.760, and 0.779, respectively. The correlation coefficient of three personality dimensions with IAPS was positive as follows: obedient (0.202), aggressive (0.272), and isolating- avoidance (0.180).
Conclusion: According to the present study's findings, the Horney-College Tridimensional Inventory has the desired reliability and validity and can have clinical use (neuroticism diagnosis) among Iranian people as a measurement tool.