Two points deserve note. First personality factors in China may not be identical to those observed in the West. While the majority of work since the 1980s has relied on measures developed in Western countries (Cheung, 2004; Zhang, 1988), since the development and use of indigenous personality inventories, such as the Chinese Personality Assessment Inventory (Cheung et al., 1996), it has been argued that a different personality model (six-factor model) is superior to the model commonly found in the West (five factor model) (Cheung et al., 2001). Second, cultural variation in neuroticism scores may be due to methodological differences between studies (Geisinger, 1994; van de Vijver and Leung, 1997). For example the meaning of an item may alter subtly after translation, and the context in which the test is administered may bias responses, a potentially important factor in our work. Even though subjects fill in the questionnaire themselves, it is likely that their responses are affected by the respect Chinese traditionally hold for people in authority, such as doctors. However this factor would not explain the difference in neuroticism scores seen between patients and controls.
