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Development and Validation of the Behavioral Tendencies Questionnaire.
Nicholas T Van Dam1,2, Anna Brown3, Tom B Mole4
1Department of Psychiatry, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, New York, United States of America.
Plos One
|November 5, 2015
Summary
This study introduces the Behavioral Tendencies Questionnaire (BTQ), a new tool based on ancient Buddhist concepts to categorize behavioral tendencies like approach, avoid, or equivocate, offering practical applications in meditation settings.
Area of Science:
- Psychology
- Behavioral Science
- Personality Theory
Background:
- Existing personality theories often lack a parsimonious taxonomy.
- Behavioral tendencies can be fundamentally categorized as approach, avoid, or equivocate.
- Ancient Buddhist texts offer a historical categorization of behavioral temperaments.
Purpose of the Study:
- To implement a parsimonious taxonomy of behavioral tendencies.
- To develop and validate a questionnaire based on Buddhist behavioral temperaments.
- To assess the psychometric properties and utility of the new questionnaire.
Main Methods:
- Developed items based on historical and contemporary texts describing "Greedy/Faithful", "Aversive/Discerning", and "Deluded/Speculative" temperaments.
- Utilized Latent Class Analysis (LCA) with a forced-choice response format.
- Employed two samples (n1=394, n2=504) for parameter estimation, classification, and cross-validation.
Main Results:
- The final 13-block Behavioral Tendencies Questionnaire (BTQ) demonstrated psychometric validity.
- Cross-validation confirmed good nomothetic span, aligning with original Buddhist concepts.
- The BTQ effectively classifies participants based on behavioral tendencies.
Conclusions:
- The BTQ is a historically consistent and psychometrically sound measure of behavioral tendencies.
- The questionnaire shows promise for practical and clinical utility, especially in meditation-related fields.
- This work validates ancient Buddhist categorizations of behavior using modern psychometric methods.
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