Assessing the Big-Five personality domains via short forms -: A cautionary note and a proposal

This research evaluated a German version of a recently introduced brief measure of the Big-Five domains (Ten Item Personality Inventory [TIPI]). Since we could not confirm the virtues of the TIPI in a representative, general population-based sample from Germany, we develop a revised short form, measuring the Big-Five personality domains with 16 adjectives. These new scales showed better reliability than the TIPI, fit the Big-Five factor structure, and were orthogonal. As preliminary evidence of construct validity, support was found for convergence correlations with the NEO-FFI and other criterion measures. Although somewhat inferior to standard Big-Five instruments, this brief adjective measure can stand as reasonable proxy for longer Big-Five measures when research conditions do not allow the use of longer instruments.