The Eysenck personality factors: Psychometric structure, reliability, heritability and phenotypic and genetic correlations with psychological distress in an isolated Croatian population

We report the psychometric structure of a Croatian translation of the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire-Revised (short-form), its correlations with psychological distress (General Health Questionnaire-30), its heritability, and personality–psychological distress genetic correlations. The setting is a large (≈1000), family-based sample of men and women from an isolated Croatian island. The neuroticism and extraversion traits and the lie scale showed good psychometric characteristics. The translated psychoticism scale was unsatisfactory in this sample. It had a very low internal consistency, probably due in part to heavily biased item responses. There were significant additive genetic contributions to variation in neuroticism, extraversion, and psychological distress. Psychological distress had a very high genetic correlation with neuroticism, and a moderate genetic correlation with extraversion.