Type A behaviour and psychological androgyny among Greek college students

Comparing five alternative factor-models of the Student Jenkins Activity Survey: separating the wheat from the chaff

The Student Jenkins Activity Survey (SJAS; Glass, 1977) is the most popular instrument for measuring Type A behavior in college undergraduates, and a variety of different unidimensional and multidimensional models for scoring the SJAS have been employed in the past. This study compared five alternative factor-models developed for the short (21-item) form of the SJAS in terms of their overall goodness of fit, factorial invariance, and factor reliabilities, using the data of two independent samples of undergraduates. Indices of relative fit for the five models ranged from .64 to .94 (median = .85), but only one unidimensional model and one multidimensional model achieved a minimum satisfactory goodness of fit (.90 or greater) for both samples. Reconceptualizing these models within a broader nomological net sheds light on their meaning and highlights existing gaps in the measurement of multifaceted Type A behavior.

A measurement model for the Type A Self-Rating Inventory

Compared to other questionnaire measures of Type A behavior, the Type A Self-Rating Inventory (TASRI) possesses particularly strong face validity. This study sought to develop a formal measurement model for the TASRI using a sample of 352 male and 479 female undergraduate psychology students. Assessed via structural equation modeling, an oblique two-factor (Hard-Driving, Extroverted) model explained over 90% of the common variance in responses to a subset of 13 of the original 28 TASRI items for men, women, and the pooled data. As hypothesized, relative to women, men had a greater mean score on the Hard-Driving factor and a lower mean score on the Extroverted factor. However, the magnitude of these gender differences is small. When reconceptualized in the context of work on the Big Five factor model, the Hard-Driving and Extroverted factors were found to reflect related elements of positive sociability and negative power, respectively.