About invariance and intercorrelation of factors in the Revised NEO Personality Inventory (NEO-PI-R) and the Trier Integrated Personality Inventory (TIPI)

Many protagonists of the five factor model of personality assume that the Big Five are easily replicable and independent factors. These hypotheses are scrutinised by an analysis of the relevant literature and an empirical study with 255 adults in which the German version of the Revised NEO Personality Inventory (NEO-PI-R) and the Trier Integrated Personality Inventory (TIPI) were applied. The author uses a variant of confirmatory factor analysis in which five NEO-PI-R and four TIPI factors are simultaneously extracted. First, it is shown that the Big Five, as represented by the NEO-PI-R, are not exactly replicated in other diagnostic instruments apart from instruments that were modelled on the NEO-PI-R. Second, it is shown that the NEO-PI-R Big Five are not independent factors.