Objective: Junior Temperament and Character Inventory (J-TCI) was developed by Luby et al. (1999) based on Cloninger`s biopsychosocial model to assess temperament and character personality components in children and adolescents. The objective of the current study was to establish psychometric properties and factorial validity of the Turkish J-TCI in a sample of co-ed elementary and middle school students in Turkey.
Methods: The Turkish version of J-TCI was translated and developed by Kose and Celikel and administered to 1129 elementary and middle school students (male/female, 546/583). Internal consistency reliabilities were measured by Cronbach`s alpha, test-re-test was assessed across 1 month.
Results: Principal axis factoring with Oblique rotations was used to investigate factorial validity. Cronbach alphas for the subscales of J-TCI ranged from 0.60 to 0.75 for temperament and character subscales, which was comparable to U.S and other populations. The correlations between first and second administration of J-TCI were significant ranging from 0.07 to 14. Factor analysis results using Eigenvalue greater than one rule indicated three factors out four factors for temperament scales and one factor out of two factors for character subscales, which was similar to findings from the other countries. When all of the subscales were subjected to factor analysis, four factors out of six factors were retained.
Conclusions: The reliability and factorial validity of the Turkish version of the J-TCI showed similarities with other reliability and validity studies of J-TCI and was therefore supported.