A Methodological Critique of the Structured-Interview Assessment of Type A Behavior

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Abstract
Type A behavior, which is often defined as extremes of aggressiveness, hostility, time urgency, and competitive achievement striving, has been linked to the development of coronary heart disease. A structured interview is currently one of the standard ways of assessing this behavior pattern. Though Type A behavior as assessed by this type of interview successfully predicted disease in a large-scale epidemiologic study, a close look at the literature reveals that there are some problems with this assessment tool. Several versions of the interview have been published, there is no one standard scoring system, interviewers must attend a relatively expensive workshop to be trained, and little is known about the relationship between interviewing style and interviewee response. Most important, however, are recent data that have raised doubts about the validity of the structured-interview-assessed Type A construct.

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