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Original Article

The NB5I

A Full-Scale Big-Five Inventory With Evaluatively Neutralized Items

Published Online:February 01, 2023https://doi.org/10.1027/1015-5759/a000687

Abstract

Abstract: Personality is usually measured by means of self-ratings. Despite some drawbacks, the method is here to stay, and improving on it, particularly regarding social desirability, is essential. One way to do this is evaluative neutralization, that is, to rephrase items such that it is less obvious to the respondent what would be a desirable response. We present a 120-item evaluatively neutralized five-factor inventory and compare it to the IPIP-NEO (Goldberg et al., 2006). Psychometric analyses revealed that the new inventory has high factor homogeneity, relatively independent facets with acceptable homogeneity and normally distributed ratings, and relatively evaluatively neutral ratings (as indicated by the level of item popularity). In sum, this new inventory captures the same personality variance as other five-factor inventories but with less influence from individual differences in evaluative responding, resulting in less correlation between factors and a factor structure more in line with the simple structure model than many other five-factor inventories. Evaluatively neutralized inventories should be particularly useful when the factor structure is central to the research question and focuses on discriminant validity, such as identifying theoretically valid relationships between personality traits and other concepts.

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