Manas Prakriti Assessment Inventory (MPAI): Development, Standardization, and Validation of an Ayurveda-Based Personality Measure

Background: In Ayurvedic treatises, the state of a person’s psyche (Sattva) is shaped by the Triguna (three mental attributes: Sattva, Rajas and Tamas), whose relative predominance determines an individual’s mental constitution, known as Manas Prakriti. Although the Triguna concept has been examined by several psychologists, methodologically rigorous assessment tools developed within Ayurveda remain scarce. Objective: To develop the Manas Prakriti Assessment Inventory (MPAI) and to evaluate its reliability and validity using structured psychometric procedures. Material and Methods: Development comprised systematic item generation, preliminary draft construction, pilot testing, field testing and psychometric analysis. After approval from the Institutional Ethical Committee (Letter No. Dean/2016-17/EC/768), the MPAI was administered to 100 clinically healthy students aged 18-25 years from different departments of Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi; 95 complete responses were analyzed. Reliability was assessed using Cronbach’s alpha and Guttman’s lambda-2, content validity by a panel of 14 experts, and convergent validity and classification agreement against an existing Manas Prakriti questionnaire. Results: Internal consistency (n = 95) was satisfactory for the Sattvika (Sattva-predominant; Cronbach’s alpha = 0.806) and Rajasika (Rajas-predominant; 0.731) dimensions and acceptable for the Tamasika (Tamas-predominant) dimension (0.684; Guttman’s lambda-2 = 0.706). All 14 experts (9 Ayurveda, 5 psychology) rated the inventory applicable or strongly applicable. In the 71 participants whose Prakriti was classifiable by both instruments, all three MPAI dimensions correlated positively and significantly with the corresponding dimensions of the existing questionnaire (Sattvika r = 0.531, p < 0.001; Rajasika r = 0.356, p < 0.01; Tamasika r = 0.240, p < 0.05), and the two tools assigned the same Manas Prakriti to 76.06% of participants (Gwet’s first-order agreement coefficient [AC1] = 0.75; 95% confidence interval [CI] 0.63–0.85). Conclusion: The MPAI shows satisfactory evidence of reliability and convergent validity for assessing mental constitution in healthy university students aged 18-25 years.