Development of a short form of the Gray–Wilson Personality Questionnaire: its use in measuring personality and adjustment among Russian adolescents

The development of a short form of the Gray–Wilson Personality Questionnaire (GWPQ-S) is described. On the basis of earlier, cross-cultural factor analyses of the original 120 items and 6 subscales it was decided to reduce the test to two major scales, the behavioural activation system (BAS) and the behavioural inhibition system (BIS). Although these bear similarity to the familiar factors of impulsiveness and anxiety, they differ in being derived from a pool of items specifically designed to tap human equivalents of the animal learning paradigms central to Grayʹs personality theory (approach, active avoidance, passive avoidance, extinction, fight and flight). Item reduction was based on factor loadings from a new sample of 454 Russian adolescents and correlations with previously validated criteria—teacher, parent and self-ratings of conduct and emotional problems. Despite the additional constraint of balanced direction of scoring (an advantage over previous BAS/BIS Scales), satisfactory internal consistency was achieved with a 28 item test (alphas of 0.67 and 0.64).