The Eysenck personality factors: Psychometric structure, reliability, heritability and phenotypic and genetic correlations with psychological distress in an isolated Croatian population

We report the psychometric structure of a Croatian translation of the Eysenck Personality QuestionnaireRevised (short-form), its correlations with psychological distress (General Health Questionnaire-30), its heritability, and personality–psychological distress genetic correlations. The setting is a large ( 1000), family-based sample of men and women from an isolated Croatian island. The neuroticism and extraversion traits and the lie scale showed good psychometric characteristics. The translated psychoticism scale was unsatisfactory in this sample. It had a very low internal consistency, probably due in part to heavily biased 0191-8869/$ see front matter 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.paid.2006.06.025 * Corresponding author. Tel.: +44 1316503452; fax: +44 1316511771. E-mail address: [email protected] (I.J. Deary). 124 V. Ivkovic et al. / Personality and Individual Differences 42 (2007) 123–133 item responses. There were significant additive genetic contributions to variation in neuroticism, extraversion, and psychological distress. Psychological distress had a very high genetic correlation with neuroticism, and a moderate genetic correlation with extraversion. 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.