OToPS/Measures/Big Five Inventory

Lead section
The Big Five Inventory (BFI) is a 44 item self-report questionnaire, developed by John and researchers, that measures an individual on the five personality factors from the Big Five, or the five factor model (FFM), with each item being rated on a five point scale. The following factors that also make up the subscales of the BFI are: Extraversion, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, Neuroticism, and Openness. The BFI is one of the most commonly used tool for assessing individual personality traits and can be used across a variety of settings, either for personal use or for clinical or research purposes. The BFI is also known to be a reliable and valid measure of the Big Five personality traits, while keeping the completion time to be efficient (takes about 5 - 15 minutes to administer). The BFI is typically administered in older populations, but younger populations can fill out this measure as well. In addition, the BFI is available in different languages. The lead section gives a quick summary of what the assessment is. Here are some pointers (please do not use bullet points when writing article):


 * 1) Make sure to include a link to the "anchor citation"
 * 2) What are its acronyms?
 * 3) What is its purpose?
 * 4) What population is it intended for? What do the items measure?
 * 5) How long does it take to administer?
 * 6) Who (individual or groups) was it created by?
 * 7) How many questions are inside? Is it multiple choice?
 * 8) What has been its impact on the clinical world in general?
 * 9) Who uses it? Clinicians? Researchers? What settings?
 * 10) Using the Edit Source function, remove collapse top and collapse bottom curly wurlys to show content.

Steps for evaluating reliability and validity

 * 1) Evaluate the instrument by referring to the rubrics for evaluating reliability and validity (both external Wikiversity pages). For easy reference, open these pages in separate tabs.
 * 2) Reliability rubric
 * 3) Validity rubric
 * 4) Refer to the relevant instrument rubric table. This is the table that you will be editing. Do not confuse this with the external pages on reliability and validity.
 * 5) Instrument rubric table: Reliability
 * 6) Instrument rubric table: Validity
 * 7) Depending on whether instrument was adequate, good, excellent, or too good:
 * 8) Insert your rating.
 * 9) Add the evidence from journal articles that support your evaluation.
 * 10) Provide citations.
 * 11) Refer to the heading for the instrument rubric table ("Rubric for evaluating norms and reliability for the XXX ... indicates new construct or category")
 * 12) Make sure that you change the name of the instrument accordingly.
 * 13) Using the Edit Source function, remove collapse top and collapse bottom curly wurlys to show content.

Instrument rubric table: Reliability
Note: Not all of the different types of reliability apply to the way that questionnaires are typically used. Internal consistency (whether all of the items measure the same construct) is not usually reported in studies of questionnaires; nor is inter-rater reliability (which would measure how similar peoples' responses were if the interviews were repeated again, or different raters listened to the same interview). Therefore, make adjustments as needed.

Reliability
Not all of the different types of reliability apply to the way that questionnaires are typically used. Internal consistency (whether all of the items measure the same construct) is not usually reported in studies of questionnaires; nor is inter-rater reliability (which would measure how similar peoples' responses were if the interviews were repeated again, or different raters listened to the same interview). Therefore, make adjustments as needed.

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.

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.

Development and history
Previously, researchers have attempted to identify the major dimensions of personality. Researchers defined many facets and factors of personality; however, there were complications with their theoretical models. Tupes and Christal eventually have found five strong factors of personality. Initially, there were known as Extraversion or Surgency, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, Emotional Stability versus Neuroticism, and Culture. These later became known as the Big Five. These five factors allow for a broader framework that contains and categorizes more specific personality traits.

One of the first attempts to include the Big Five in questionnaires was made by Costa and McCrae, as they were developing the NEO Personality Inventory that included factors of Neuroticism, Extraversion, and Openness, and later included Agreeableness and Conscientiousness factors (with the revised NEO Personality Inventory, NEO PI-R). However, these previous measures of the big five personality traits often take too long to complete. Researchers (John, Donahue, and Kentle) wanted to address the need for short instruments measuring components of the Big Five by developing a brief inventory that would allow efficient and flexible assessment of the five dimensions. The items in the BFI were developed through factor analytic verification in personality ratings. The items of BFI comprise of short phrases based on trait adjectives known to be markers of the Big Five, instead of including just one adjective. This structure was kept so as to avoid ambiguity and to still keep the measure brief. These short scales save testing time and also avoid boredom and fatigue of the test-takers.

The Big Five Inventory is composed of the following subscales:

Extraversion

Neuroticism

Conscientiousness

Openness

Agreeableness
 * Why was this instrument developed? Why was there a need to do so? What need did it meet?
 * What was the theoretical background behind this assessment? (e.g. addresses importance of 'negative cognitions', such as intrusions, inaccurate, sustained thoughts)
 * How was the scale developed? What was the theoretical background behind it?
 * How are these questions reflected in applications to theories, such as cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT)?
 * If there were previous versions, when were they published?
 * Discuss the theoretical ideas behind the changes.

Impact
The major goal for the Big Five Inventory was to be a brief and reliable personality measure than other previous personality measures. It is not only easy to administer, but it also takes a very short amount of time to complete, as it takes about 5 - 15 minutes. In addition, it can be used in multiple settings, for personal use or for research purposes, and it is also available online.

Revised version of the BFI
Researchers have recently developed a revised version of the BFI, known as the BFI-2. The BFI-2 has 60 items. The BFI-2 is aimed to be an improvement of the original BFI and has higher predictive power as well as better reliability and validity scores.

Shortened versions
There are many different versions of the BFI. The BFI has been condensed to various short versions, most of which are reduced to five to ten items. These shorter measures have been shown to have adequate reliability and validity scores, while trying to aim for brevity.

Translated BFI
The BFI has also been released and translated to different languages other than English: Chinese, Dutch , German, Hebrew, Italian , Lithuanian, Portuguese, Spanish, and Swedish. Research has supported that these translated versions also have good reliability and validity.

Limitations
The BFI is a self report measure, which have some vulnerabilities in its experimental design. For instance, social desirability bias in participant can occur, as individuals can rate themselves on personality traits in a way that portrays them more positively. This type of bias can skew the accuracy of the results. In addition, since this is a subjective measure, it may be difficult for the individuals to precisely pinpoint a number that represents how likely it is that the description best suits them. Moreover, the answers that they give might not accurately represent who they are. Because the BFI was intended to be a short scale, this can lead to some drawbacks, as including lesser items could sacrifice reliability and validity scores.

Scoring instructions and syntax
We have syntax in three major languages: R, SPSS, and SAS. All variable names are the same across all three, and all match the CSV shell that we provide as well as the Qualtrics export.

Hand scoring and general instructions
The following questions on the BFI are reversed scored:

Extraversion: 6, 21, 31

Agreeableness: 2, 12, 27, 37

Conscientiousness: 8, 18, 23, 43

Neuroticism: 9, 24, 34

Openness: 35, 41

To reverse-scored these items, subtract the answer that was given from 6. 1 becomes a 5, 2 becomes 4, 3 is still 3, 4 becomes 2, and 5 becomes 1. To create scale scores, you will add the total responses for each subscale (R represents the reverse-scored item) and then average them.

Extraversion: 1, 6R, 11, 16, 21R, 26, 31R, 36

Agreeableness: 2R, 7, 12R, 17, 22, 27R, 32, 37R, 42

Conscientiousness: 3, 8R, 13, 18R, 23R, 29, 33, 38, 43R

Neuroticism: 4, 9R, 14, 19, 24R, 29, 34R, 39

Openness: 5, 10, 15, 20, 25, 30 35R, 40, 41R, 44

CSV shell for sharing

 * 

Here is a shell data file that you could use in your own research. The variable names in the shell corresponds with the scoring code in the code for all three statistical programs.

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.

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 and better than meta-analysis in that they are combining the raw data, versus working with summary descriptive statistics).

R/SPSS/SAS syntax
R code goes here


 * Reverse scoring

RECODE

bfi02 bfi06 bfi08 bfi09 bfi12 bfi18 bfi21 bfi23 bfi24 bfi27 bfi31 bfi35 bfi37 bfi41 bfi43

(1=5)(2=4)(3=3)(4=2)(5=1) INTO revbfi02 revbfi06 revbfi08 revbfi09 revbfi12 revbfi18 revbfi21 revbfi23 revbfi24 revbfi27 revbfi31 revbfi34 revbfi35 revbfi37 revbfi41 revbfi43. EXECUTE.


 * Calculating the average of each subscale

COMPUTE bfie = mean(bfi01, revbfi06, bfi11, bfi16, revbfi21, bfi26, revbfi31, bfi36). VARIABLE LABELS bfie 'Extraversion Score'. EXECUTE.

COMPUTE bfia = mean(revbfi02, bfi07, revbfi12, bfi17, bfi22, revbfi27, bfi32, revbfi37, bfi42). VARIABLE LABELS bfia 'Agreeableness Score'. EXECUTE.

COMPUTE bfic = mean(bfi03, revbfi08, revbfi18, revbfi23, bfi28, bfi33, bfi38, revbfi43). VARIABLE LABELS bfic 'Conscientiousness Score'. EXECUTE.

COMPUTE bfin = mean(bfi04, revbfi09, bfi14, bfi19, revbfi24, bfi29, revbfi34, bfi39). VARIABLE LABELS bfin 'Neuroticism Score'. EXECUTE.

COMPUTE bfio = mean(bfi05, bfi10, bfi15, bfi20, bfi30, revbfi35, bfi40 revbfi41, bfi44). VARIABLE LABELS bfio 'Openness Score'. EXECUTE.

SAS code goes here