# OToPS/Measures/Hypomanic Personality Scale

scale that was developed in order to identify persons with hypomanic personality traits. Hypomania refers to mild symptoms of mania, and it is often a prodrome for bipolar disorder. Due to hypomania's pre-morbidity with bipolar disorder, Mark Eckblad and Loren J. Chapman created the HPS in order to detect individuals at high risk. The HPS is a self-report questionnaire consisting of 48 True/False questions. It is intended for adults and should take 15-20 minutes to administer. The HPS is one of the most widely used measures of mania and has had a large impact in identifying hypomanic personality in both clinical and research settings.
The Hypomanic Personality Scale (HPS) is a self-report questionnaire that identifies people with high risk for hypomania or bipolar disorder diagnosis in clinical and research settings by asking 48 true/false questions to adults. “Hypomania” refers to a set of trait characteristics including euphoria, gregariousness, and optimism as well as irritability, hyperactivity and recklessness. This is a state of persistent elevation in mood, leading to increased energy, talkativeness, confidence, and many creative ideas. These hypomanic behaviors are problematic by increasing one’s irritability and participation in risky behaviors. Additionally, these people are at an increased risk of experiencing hypomanic episodes and developing bipolar disorder. Hypomania is often premorbid with bipolar disorder, which is a cause of premature death and social impairment. The HPS is a self-report questionnaire developed by Eckblad and Chapman. While Eckblad and Chapman developed the HPS viewing hypomanic personality as one homogenous construct, literature suggests a factor model consisting of 1, 3, or 4 different components.

## Reliability
#### Reliability

Reliability refers to whether the scores are reproducible. Unless otherwise specified, the reliability scores and values come from studies done with a United States population sample. Here is the rubric for evaluating the reliability of scores on a measure for the purpose of evidence based assessment.
Evaluation for norms and reliability for the HPS (table from Youngstrom et al., extending Hunsley & Mash, 2008; *indicates new construct or category) :
| Criterion | Rating (adequate, good, excellent, too good*) | Explanation with references |
| Norms | Adequate | Convenience sample and research study using nonclinical samples, provides means for both male and female |
| Internal consistency (Cronbach’s alpha, split half, etc.) | Not published | |
| Inter-rater reliability | Not applicable | Self-report scale. |
| Test-retest reliability (stability) | Good | r = .81 over 15 weeks. Evaluated in initial studies. |
| Repeatability | Not published | No published studies formally checking repeatability |

## Instrument rubric table: Validity
#### Validity

Validity describes the evidence that an assessment tool measures what it was supposed to measure. There are many different ways of checking validity. For screening measures, diagnostic accuracy and discriminative validity are probably the most useful ways of looking at validity. Unless otherwise specified, the validity scores and values come from studies done with a United States population sample. Here is a rubric for describing validity of test scores in the context of evidence-based assessment.
Evaluation of validity and utility for the HPS (table from Youngstrom et al., unpublished, extended from Hunsley & Mash, 2008; *indicates new construct or category) :
| Criterion | Rating (adequate, good, excellent, too good*) | Explanation with references |
| Content validity | Excellent | Covers both DSM diagnostic symptoms and a range of associated features, scores positively correlate with hypomanic and manic episodes. |
| Construct validity (e.g., predictive, concurrent, convergent, and discriminant validity) | Good | Shows predictive validity with other scales over brief intervals, correlates positively with other bipolar disorder measures. |
| Discriminative validity | NA | |
| Validity generalization | Adequate | Measure has been used in more than one demographic group |
| Treatment sensitivity | NA | |
| Clinical utility | Good | Free (public domain), good psychometrics, research suggest it is clinically beneficial |

## Impact

This assessment has had extensive impact in both clinical and research settings. Although the HPS does not lead to diagnosis of a particular disorder, its ability to accurately identify hypomania allows both clinicians and researchers to identify persons who are at an elevated risk for developing bipolar disorder. This assessment has been found helpful for both researchers (especially in longitudinal studies) and clinicians because it is one of the few measures that is able to predict development of mania and bipolar symptoms. Overall the HPS has been shown to more closely relate to manic symptoms than other scales such as the NEO-IV.

## Use in other populations

The HPS has been translated into Spanish and the psychometric properties have been found to comparable to the English version.

## Limitations

The Hypomania Personality Scale is a self-report scale that consists of only True/False questions. This is the main limitation of this scale because people may under or over report their level of hypomania due to personal biases.
There have been efforts to reduce the number of items on the scale.

## Scoring Instructions and Syntax

Scoring syntaxes are routinely included in three major languages: R, SPSS, and SAS. All variable names are the same across all three (so we follow naming conventions that would work in any of them -- note that R is case sensitive), and all match the CSV shell that we provide as well as the Qualtrics export.

### CSV Shell

Because we are sharing the scoring syntax, we also want to share a shell data file that you could use in your own research. If you use this file, or make sure that your own file uses the same variable names, then the scoring code we provide should do the basic scoring for you. When different research projects and groups use the same variable names and syntax, it makes it easier to share the data and work together on integrative data analyses or "mega" analyses (which are different from meta-analysis in that they are combining the raw data, versus working with summary descriptive statistics).
Note that our CSV includes several demographic variables, which follow current conventions in most developmental and clinical psychology journals. You may want to modify them, depending on where you are working. Also pay attention to the possibility of "deductive identification" -- if we ask personal information in enough detail, then it may be possible to figure out the identity of a participant based on a combination of variables.
<Paste Link to CSV Shell here>