injury (M AIS score = 3.1) and 72% had witnessed a fatality or serious accident associated
with the sport.
An independent-samples t test was used to compare TCI-235 scores in BASE jumpers
relative to an age group-matched population. A two-sided significance level (α) was set at
0.05. Spearman’s non-parametric correlation coefficients were used to explore the association
between TCI findings and accidents. Means and standard deviations of the seven temperament
and character dimensions of the TCI-235 for both groups are shown in Table 3. BASE jumpers
score significantly higher than the normative population on NS and SD. In addition, BASE
jumpers score significantly lower on HA, RD, and ST compared to the normative population.
However, the BASE jumper’s scores do not differ significantly from the normative population
on P or C.
There is no association between temperament and character traits and accident measures,
strongest Spearman’s r =−0.09.
All TCI scores, except HA, are distributed relatively normally. As the histogram on Figure 1
shows, HA scores have a markedly skewed distribution. In particular a significant proportion
of BASE jumpers have extremely low HA scores; 40% have a score of 4 or less.