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The 23BB5: a new Bipolar Big Five questionnaire
Per.wn.
Pergamon
indkid.
UfJ:
Vol.
19. No.
Copyright Printed
in Great
0191~8869(95)00119-0
0 1995 Britain.
5, pp. 753-755. Elsevier All
1995
Science rights
0 I9 I -8869/95
$9.50
Ltd
reserved + 0.00
NOTES AND SHORTER COMMUNICATIONS The 23BB5: a new Bipolar Inge .I. Duijsens Section
Big Five questionnaire
and RenC F. W. Diekstra
of Clinical, Health and Personality University
of Leiden,
Psychology, Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences, Pieter de la Court Building, Wassenaarseweg 52, P.O. Box 9555, 2300 RB Leiden. The Netherlands (Received 21 April 1995)
Summary-In this paper we present a new questionnaire for the measurement of the Big Five personality dimensions. Principal-component analysis of the scores of a group of 450 normal subjects yielded an interpretable five-factor solution in which each factor is defined by a Big Five factor. Except for the Openness factor, the internal consistency of the factors was reasonable to good. Twenty-three of the 26 bipolar Big Five adjective pairs had criterion level ( 2 0.40) factor loadings on the expected factors. Based on this factor solution a 23 Bipolar Big Five questionnaire (23BB5) was constructed, in which each Big Five dimension consists of four to six bipolar items.
INTRODUCTION A short bipolar adjective questionnaire for measuring Big Five personality dimensions (Digman, 1990) is not available in the Dutch language. The first author constructed such a questionnaire using a selection of adjectives used by Costa and McCrae (1992), trait adjectives of the Abridged Five-Dimensional Circumplex [ABsC (Hofstee & de Raad, 199l)] and adjectives formulated by Diekstra (1993). The three adjectives with the highest positive and also the three with the highest negative loadings from the ABsC were selected. In the article by Hofstee and de Raad no adjectives were reported that loaded purely on factor V (Openness). Therefore adjectives were selected from V + IV + and V - IV ~ (see Hofstee & de Raad, 1991). After a tryout on a small sample (seven persons), we eliminated some of the bipolar pairs because they were confusing to the Ss or not seen as bipolar by them. The final item pool consisted of 26 adjective pairs. The items were bipolar adjective pairs and were measured on a scale of l-7. Ss were asked to indicate the degree to which the trait is applicable to them, by circling a number.
METHOD Subjects The Ss were 450 healthy volunteers, varying in age between I8 and 76 yr old. The mean age for the Ss was 33 yr (SD = 14.7) of which 69% were female; 40% lived together or were married, 54% were single, 4% were divorced and 2% were widow(er)s; I I %, 6 I % and 25% had a low level, a middle or high level ofeducation, respectively. (A high level is University or equivalent.) Data collection The Ss consisted of two subgroups. One group comprised 243 people attending a lecture about personality problems (announced in local newspapers) who were asked to fill out the 26 bipolar items and another questionnaire before the lecture. The other group consisted of 207 students from an undergraduate psychology course who filled out the same two questionnaires at the end of the class. Since similar results were obtained for both groups by correlation analyses, the groups were analyzed together.
RESULTS To determine the extent to which the Big Five personality factors emerge in the sample a factor analysis was performed on the 26 adjective pairs in the item pool (see Table I). Seven values greater than unity were found. The varimax-rotated five factor solution gave the best possible interpretation. The five factors accounted for 52. I % of the total variance. A first strong factor was identified as Extraversion. The second factor was Agreeableness; the pair ‘softhearted-merciless’, however, loaded positively on the factor Neuroticism. The pair ‘helpful-not helpful’, was expected to load on Agreeableness, had only factor loadings beneath the criterion level (cO.40). The third factor was represented by Neuroticism. The pair ‘temperamental-even tempered’ was expected to load on Neuroticism, but was found to have a high loading on Agreeableness. The fourth and fifth factors represented Conscientiousness and Openness, respectively. Openness had the lowest factor loadings of all factors. Five scales were constructed: Extraversion, Agreeableness, Neuroticism, Conscientiousness and Openness, using the adjective scales which are marked with the bold factor loadings of Table I, In total, 23 of the 26 adjective pairs were selected since they had criterion level ( 2 0.40) factor loadings on the expected factors. Where necessary the values of the adjective pairs are reversed so that the high scores represent the scale name. The Cronbachs alpha internal consistency (a), means (M), standard deviations (SD), ranges and inter-correlations between the Big Five scales are presented in Table 2. The internal
and Shorter Communications
Notes
754 Table
I.
Varimax-rotated
adjective-pairs based five factors 52.1% of the total variance
(n = 450), accounted
for
Factors 2
I (I
4
3
5
) Extraversion
(17.7%) Extraverted-introverted Spontaneous-inhibited Active-passive Talkative-silent Easy to get along with-shy Open-closed
0.77 0.75 0.58 0.81 0.73 0.76
(2) Agreeableness ( I I .9%/c) Helpful-not helpful Confidential-suspicious Forgiwnggresentful Trusting-distrust Generous-stingy Softhearteddmerciless
0.78 0.69 0.75 0.47 0.55
(3) Neuroticwn (I I .5’%) Insensitive-sensitwe Emotional&unemotional Anxious-not anxious Tense-relaxed Panicky-imperturbable Temperamental-even tempered
-
0.66 0.67 0.64 0.53 0.69
0.52
(4) Conscientiousness (5.9%) Serious-fnvolous Responsibleeirresponsible Careful-careless Industrious+lazy
0.68 0.66 0.76 0.66
(5) Openness (5.0%) Progressive-traditional Curious-uncurious lmaeinativeedown to earth Creative-uncreative
0.44 0.48 0.58 0.75
,Qre: The loadings on the expected factors are printed in bold, loadings less than IO.401 are omitted.
consistency for Extraversion Openness only 0.49.
is above
0.80, for Agreeableness,
Neuroticism
and Conscientiousness
above
0.70 and for
CONCLUSION
In spite of the use of a type of adjective list different to that normally used (Wiggins, 1979), namely bipolar pairs, almost all factor loadings were as to be expected from the literature (see Costa & McCrae, 1992; Digman, 1990; Hofstee & de Raad, 1991); only two pairs, ‘softhearted-merciless’ and ‘temperamental-even tempered’, deviated from the sources. Since we included 26 item pairs in the analysis, these deviations may well be due to statistical change. One pair ‘helpful-not helpful’ did not loadon any of the five factors. The items of the Openness factor generally had the lowest loadings; ‘creative-uncreative’ appear to have the strongest effect on this factor. The Ss indicated that the bipolar items are easy to understand and can be answered in less than 5 min. An advantage of the bipolar items is that one pole of the question can be understood in the context of the counterpart pole. A disadvantage is that the questions force the item pairs to be evaluated as opposites, although these might not be seen as fully bipolar by all Ss. Of interest is the fact that (Duijsens & Diekstra, in revision) the relations with the 23BB5 and personality disorders according to ICD- IO and DSM-III-R were in general comparable with the results obtained with another Big Five questionnaire, the 5PFT (Elshout & Akkerman, 1975). The 5PFT is a much longer (70 items) unipolar questionnaire, which takes about 25 min to administer.
Table 2. Descriptive
E E A N C 0
0.3 I - 0.06 0.02 0.3 I
A
- 0.28 0.13 0.06
No&z: n = 450. E. Extraversion;
N
0.16 - 0.01
C
- 0.22
A, Agreeableness;
statistics
of the 23885
M
SD
Range
Items (n)
28.1 19.6 17.4 20.9 19.0
6.8 4.0 4.7 3.9 3.7
642 5-28 6-30 7-28 I O-28
6 4 5 4 4
N, Neuroticism;
C, Conscientiousness;
Y. 0.85 0.73 0.71 0.71 0.49 0, Openness.
Notes and Shorter Communications
755
REFERENCES
Costa, P. T. & McCrae, R. R. ( 1992). The Five-Factor Model of Personality and its Relevance to Personality Disorders. Journal of Personality Disorders, 6, 343-359.
Dieman. J. M. (1990). Personalitv structure: emergence of the five-factor model. Annual Review Psvcholoav. 41. 417-440. Diikstra, R. F. ‘W. (1993). Perso&lijk onderhoud: zakboek voor zelfanalyse. Bruna Uitgevers B.V:: Utrecht. Duijsens, I. J. & Diekstra, R. F. W. (in revision). DSM-III-R and ICD-IO personality disorders and their relationship to the Big Five dimensions of personality. Journal of Personality and Individual Differences. Elshout, J. J. & Akkerman, A. E. (1975). Handleiding van de viifpersoonliikheidsfaktorentest. (Manual of the Five Factor Personality Test.] Nijmegen: Berkhout B.V. _ _” _ _ Hofstee. W. K. B. &de Raad. B. (1991). Persoonliikheidsstructuur: de ABSC-taxonomie van Nederlandse eieenschaostermen [Trait structure: The AB5C-taxonomy of Dutch trait adjectives]. Nederlands Tijdschrif voor depsycholoiie, 46, i62-274. Wiggins, J. S. (1979). A psychological taxonomy of trait-descriptive terms: the interpersonal domain. Journal ofpersonality and Social Psychology, 37, 3954
12.
Pergamon
indkid.
UfJ:
Vol.
19. No.
Copyright Printed
in Great
0191~8869(95)00119-0
0 1995 Britain.
5, pp. 753-755. Elsevier All
1995
Science rights
0 I9 I -8869/95
$9.50
Ltd
reserved + 0.00
NOTES AND SHORTER COMMUNICATIONS The 23BB5: a new Bipolar Inge .I. Duijsens Section
Big Five questionnaire
and RenC F. W. Diekstra
of Clinical, Health and Personality University
of Leiden,
Psychology, Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences, Pieter de la Court Building, Wassenaarseweg 52, P.O. Box 9555, 2300 RB Leiden. The Netherlands (Received 21 April 1995)
Summary-In this paper we present a new questionnaire for the measurement of the Big Five personality dimensions. Principal-component analysis of the scores of a group of 450 normal subjects yielded an interpretable five-factor solution in which each factor is defined by a Big Five factor. Except for the Openness factor, the internal consistency of the factors was reasonable to good. Twenty-three of the 26 bipolar Big Five adjective pairs had criterion level ( 2 0.40) factor loadings on the expected factors. Based on this factor solution a 23 Bipolar Big Five questionnaire (23BB5) was constructed, in which each Big Five dimension consists of four to six bipolar items.
INTRODUCTION A short bipolar adjective questionnaire for measuring Big Five personality dimensions (Digman, 1990) is not available in the Dutch language. The first author constructed such a questionnaire using a selection of adjectives used by Costa and McCrae (1992), trait adjectives of the Abridged Five-Dimensional Circumplex [ABsC (Hofstee & de Raad, 199l)] and adjectives formulated by Diekstra (1993). The three adjectives with the highest positive and also the three with the highest negative loadings from the ABsC were selected. In the article by Hofstee and de Raad no adjectives were reported that loaded purely on factor V (Openness). Therefore adjectives were selected from V + IV + and V - IV ~ (see Hofstee & de Raad, 1991). After a tryout on a small sample (seven persons), we eliminated some of the bipolar pairs because they were confusing to the Ss or not seen as bipolar by them. The final item pool consisted of 26 adjective pairs. The items were bipolar adjective pairs and were measured on a scale of l-7. Ss were asked to indicate the degree to which the trait is applicable to them, by circling a number.
METHOD Subjects The Ss were 450 healthy volunteers, varying in age between I8 and 76 yr old. The mean age for the Ss was 33 yr (SD = 14.7) of which 69% were female; 40% lived together or were married, 54% were single, 4% were divorced and 2% were widow(er)s; I I %, 6 I % and 25% had a low level, a middle or high level ofeducation, respectively. (A high level is University or equivalent.) Data collection The Ss consisted of two subgroups. One group comprised 243 people attending a lecture about personality problems (announced in local newspapers) who were asked to fill out the 26 bipolar items and another questionnaire before the lecture. The other group consisted of 207 students from an undergraduate psychology course who filled out the same two questionnaires at the end of the class. Since similar results were obtained for both groups by correlation analyses, the groups were analyzed together.
RESULTS To determine the extent to which the Big Five personality factors emerge in the sample a factor analysis was performed on the 26 adjective pairs in the item pool (see Table I). Seven values greater than unity were found. The varimax-rotated five factor solution gave the best possible interpretation. The five factors accounted for 52. I % of the total variance. A first strong factor was identified as Extraversion. The second factor was Agreeableness; the pair ‘softhearted-merciless’, however, loaded positively on the factor Neuroticism. The pair ‘helpful-not helpful’, was expected to load on Agreeableness, had only factor loadings beneath the criterion level (cO.40). The third factor was represented by Neuroticism. The pair ‘temperamental-even tempered’ was expected to load on Neuroticism, but was found to have a high loading on Agreeableness. The fourth and fifth factors represented Conscientiousness and Openness, respectively. Openness had the lowest factor loadings of all factors. Five scales were constructed: Extraversion, Agreeableness, Neuroticism, Conscientiousness and Openness, using the adjective scales which are marked with the bold factor loadings of Table I, In total, 23 of the 26 adjective pairs were selected since they had criterion level ( 2 0.40) factor loadings on the expected factors. Where necessary the values of the adjective pairs are reversed so that the high scores represent the scale name. The Cronbachs alpha internal consistency (a), means (M), standard deviations (SD), ranges and inter-correlations between the Big Five scales are presented in Table 2. The internal
and Shorter Communications
Notes
754 Table
I.
Varimax-rotated
adjective-pairs based five factors 52.1% of the total variance
(n = 450), accounted
for
Factors 2
I (I
4
3
5
) Extraversion
(17.7%) Extraverted-introverted Spontaneous-inhibited Active-passive Talkative-silent Easy to get along with-shy Open-closed
0.77 0.75 0.58 0.81 0.73 0.76
(2) Agreeableness ( I I .9%/c) Helpful-not helpful Confidential-suspicious Forgiwnggresentful Trusting-distrust Generous-stingy Softhearteddmerciless
0.78 0.69 0.75 0.47 0.55
(3) Neuroticwn (I I .5’%) Insensitive-sensitwe Emotional&unemotional Anxious-not anxious Tense-relaxed Panicky-imperturbable Temperamental-even tempered
-
0.66 0.67 0.64 0.53 0.69
0.52
(4) Conscientiousness (5.9%) Serious-fnvolous Responsibleeirresponsible Careful-careless Industrious+lazy
0.68 0.66 0.76 0.66
(5) Openness (5.0%) Progressive-traditional Curious-uncurious lmaeinativeedown to earth Creative-uncreative
0.44 0.48 0.58 0.75
,Qre: The loadings on the expected factors are printed in bold, loadings less than IO.401 are omitted.
consistency for Extraversion Openness only 0.49.
is above
0.80, for Agreeableness,
Neuroticism
and Conscientiousness
above
0.70 and for
CONCLUSION
In spite of the use of a type of adjective list different to that normally used (Wiggins, 1979), namely bipolar pairs, almost all factor loadings were as to be expected from the literature (see Costa & McCrae, 1992; Digman, 1990; Hofstee & de Raad, 1991); only two pairs, ‘softhearted-merciless’ and ‘temperamental-even tempered’, deviated from the sources. Since we included 26 item pairs in the analysis, these deviations may well be due to statistical change. One pair ‘helpful-not helpful’ did not loadon any of the five factors. The items of the Openness factor generally had the lowest loadings; ‘creative-uncreative’ appear to have the strongest effect on this factor. The Ss indicated that the bipolar items are easy to understand and can be answered in less than 5 min. An advantage of the bipolar items is that one pole of the question can be understood in the context of the counterpart pole. A disadvantage is that the questions force the item pairs to be evaluated as opposites, although these might not be seen as fully bipolar by all Ss. Of interest is the fact that (Duijsens & Diekstra, in revision) the relations with the 23BB5 and personality disorders according to ICD- IO and DSM-III-R were in general comparable with the results obtained with another Big Five questionnaire, the 5PFT (Elshout & Akkerman, 1975). The 5PFT is a much longer (70 items) unipolar questionnaire, which takes about 25 min to administer.
Table 2. Descriptive
E E A N C 0
0.3 I - 0.06 0.02 0.3 I
A
- 0.28 0.13 0.06
No&z: n = 450. E. Extraversion;
N
0.16 - 0.01
C
- 0.22
A, Agreeableness;
statistics
of the 23885
M
SD
Range
Items (n)
28.1 19.6 17.4 20.9 19.0
6.8 4.0 4.7 3.9 3.7
642 5-28 6-30 7-28 I O-28
6 4 5 4 4
N, Neuroticism;
C, Conscientiousness;
Y. 0.85 0.73 0.71 0.71 0.49 0, Openness.
Notes and Shorter Communications
755
REFERENCES
Costa, P. T. & McCrae, R. R. ( 1992). The Five-Factor Model of Personality and its Relevance to Personality Disorders. Journal of Personality Disorders, 6, 343-359.
Dieman. J. M. (1990). Personalitv structure: emergence of the five-factor model. Annual Review Psvcholoav. 41. 417-440. Diikstra, R. F. ‘W. (1993). Perso&lijk onderhoud: zakboek voor zelfanalyse. Bruna Uitgevers B.V:: Utrecht. Duijsens, I. J. & Diekstra, R. F. W. (in revision). DSM-III-R and ICD-IO personality disorders and their relationship to the Big Five dimensions of personality. Journal of Personality and Individual Differences. Elshout, J. J. & Akkerman, A. E. (1975). Handleiding van de viifpersoonliikheidsfaktorentest. (Manual of the Five Factor Personality Test.] Nijmegen: Berkhout B.V. _ _” _ _ Hofstee. W. K. B. &de Raad. B. (1991). Persoonliikheidsstructuur: de ABSC-taxonomie van Nederlandse eieenschaostermen [Trait structure: The AB5C-taxonomy of Dutch trait adjectives]. Nederlands Tijdschrif voor depsycholoiie, 46, i62-274. Wiggins, J. S. (1979). A psychological taxonomy of trait-descriptive terms: the interpersonal domain. Journal ofpersonality and Social Psychology, 37, 3954
12.