Psychological distress and neuroticism: a two-wave panel study

Abstract

The temporal relationship between psychological distress and Neuroticism, both measured at two points eight months apart, was examined in a representative sample of 225 adult residents in Canberra, using cross-lagged panel correlation and latent variable LISREL analysis. Psychological distress was assessed by the 30-item General Health Questionnaire (GHQ-30). Because the synchronous and autocorrelations differed significantly, the interpretation of the significant difference between the cross-lagged correlations was problematic. The cross-lagged path coefficients in the LISREL models were not significantly positive, suggesting that the temporal relationship between these two variables was spurious and due to error variance. The test-retest correlation was significantly higher for Neuroticism than for the GHQ-30, implying that Neuroticism is more a measure of a relatively stable personality characteristic and the GHQ-30 more one of transient psychological distress.