Personality types of women attending an STD clinic: correlation with keeping first review appointments

One hundred and eighty new women patients attending a sexually transmitted disease (STD) clinic answered the Eysenck personality questionnaire (EPQ) which measures psychoticism, extraversion, neuroticism, and a tendency to "fake good". These personality scores were correlated with the patients' attendance or non-attendance for their first review appointments. The results showed that the mean psychoticism scale scores of the 41 non-attenders was significantly higher than that of the 139 who kept their first appointment. This relation was confirmed using point biserial correlations. The mean scores of non-attenders on the other three EPQ scales were not significantly different from those of attenders, and none of the correlations between the other EPQ scales and this behavioural criterion was significant. The psychoticism scale is tentatively recommended for identifying women patients who may need special counselling about the importance of keeping their first review appointment.