Development of a tool to assess personality based on Tridosha and Triguna concepts

Abstract

In the present study, the researcher has attempted to develop Scales to assess Personality based on the Indian concepts of Tridosha and Triguna. This constitutes the Section 1, Part 1 and 2 of the work. To do this, information to develop the items was sourced from many different scriptures from the Indian intellectual tradition. Previous tools were studied both from the Ayurvedic domain for the Tridosha scale and from the psychological domain for the Triguna scale. The development of tools, as an activity underwent several revisions. To establish the psychometric properties of the scales data were collected on a sample from the three different professions, i.e., Teachers, Police personnel, and IT Professionals apart from another group of adults which comprised the General Adult group. Thus the Scales were standardized on a group of people which comprised of 358 Teachers, 414 Police personnel, 346 IT Professionals and 430 in the group of General Adults, thereby bringing the total number of respondents to 1548. The inclusion criteria consisted of multiple steps that needed to be completed to ensure that the respondents were satisfied in their job, practicing the job consecutively for a minimum period of five years, ensuring that the respondents do not have any psychiatric problems, and that the respondents are not dependent on alcohol or nicotine. Only after completing all these procedures and clearing them successfully, the respondents were allowed to answer the actual Personality Assessment tests and were included in the study. The psychometric properties of the scales were established, comprising reliability, validity and norms. The answers given by the respondent for each of the different factors of Tridosha (VPK Vata, Pitta, Kapha) and Triguna (SRT Sattva, Rajas, Tamas) items were scored and tabulated. Then they were converted into Stanine scores. This gives the picture of dominance-combination of each respondent s Tridosha and Triguna composition/ combination.