DEVELOPMENT OF THE JAPANESE BRIEF VERSION OF SHORT INTERPERSONAL REACTIONS INVENTORY FOR MEASURING CANCER-PRONE PERSONALITY

HIROAKI KUMANO, MD, Tomifusa Kuboki, MD, The University of Tokyo; Yukiko Orii, MS, Tohoku University; Tatsuo Fukuse, MD, Toshiki Hirata, MD, Kyoto University; Kazuhiko Shinohara, MD, Saitama Medical School; Masahiro Seto, PhD, Ichiro Agari, PhD, University of East Asia; Yuji Sakano, PhD, Waseda University

We made the Japanese brief version of the Short Interpersonal Reactions Inventory (SIRI) originally developed by Eysenck HJ and Grossarth-Maticek R which aims at measuring the cancer-prone personality.

The SIRI with some parallel tests were answered by 900 healthy adults and by 30 lung cancer and 10 alimentary tract cancer patients.

As a result of factor analysis based on the data of 900 healthy adults, 33 items were retained and 6 factors consistent with the original scale were extracted (46.2% of total variance). The cancer-prone personality corresponds to the type 1 and type 5. It was indicated that the Japanese brief version of the SIRI (SIRI33) could discriminate 6 personality types by comparing standardized scores of 6 subscales. As comparing the mean scores of several parallel tests in 6 personality types, the type 1 was assumed to measure one major trait of cancer-prone personality named 'harmony seeking' and the type 5 was assumed to measure the other major trait named 'rationality/anti-emotionality'.

There were 25 subjects of either type 1 or type 5 personality out of 40 patients, and their appearance rates were significantly bigger than that of sex and age-matched healthy controls. On the other hand, there was no patient of type 2 personality corresponding to ischemic heart disease-prone personality, and there was only 4 patients of type 4 personality which is a characteristic of autonomous and healthy individuals. Furthermore, these tendencies were more prominent in younger patients. There were 7 type 1 and 3 type 5 subjects while there were no type 2 nor type 4 subjects out of 13 patients under the age of 60.

It was concluded that a brief questionnaire was developed which can measure personality traits mainly composed of 'harmony seeking' or 'rationality/anti-emotionality' and its standardized data were obtained. In addition, its clinical and discriminative validity was proved especially in younger cancer patients.