Development of an indigenous Chinese personality inventory based on the principle of yin-yang and the five elements and on the ancient Chinese text 'Jen Wu Chih'.

摘要

The purpose of this study was to design, develop, and validate an indigenous Chinese personality assessment inventory. The inventory is intended for use with university students in Chinese societies, to help them understand their personality traits and how their unique sets of energies influence and are influenced by others. The assessment instrument is based upon the Chinese philosophy of the five elements and their yin and yang qualities. The behavioral traits representing this cosmological model are derived from an ancient Chinese work titled Jen Wu Chih, which is regarded as one of the earliest references to personality theory in Chinese literature. A two hundred item bank was generated and pilot tested with 267 Taiwanese university students. With application of the statistical tools of Cronbach's alpha, homogeneity analysis, and exploratory factor analysis, the item bank was reduced to 80 and administered to 715 Taiwanese university students. The strength of the psychometric standards of the inventory was demonstrated with reliability and validity measures. Four hypotheses were tested showing that (1) yin and yang can be clearly differentiated; (2) yin and yang show complementary and bipolar relationships; (3) there are gender differences consistent with cultural conditioning; and (4) there are no substantial academic area differences. The inventory consisted of thirty scales (two for each yin and each yang of each of the five elements). The researcher concluded that forty scales may offer more in depth perspective in future studies and that there may be merit in exploring further the complex dynamic of how the elements act upon each other, in addition to their properties, as suggested in Chinese philosophy.