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Original Articles

Toward More Readable Big Five Personality Inventories

Published Online:October 03, 2006https://doi.org/10.1027/1015-5759.22.3.149

Abstract

The Estonian version of the International Personality Item Pool NEO (IPIP-NEO; Goldberg, 1999) was administered to 297 participants in parallel with the Estonian version of the NEO-PI-R (Kallasmaa, Allik, Realo, & McCrae, 2000). On average, the EPIP-NEO items were 3 words, 7 syllables, and 18 characters shorter than the NEO-PI-R items. By all relevant psychometrical properties the EPIP-NEO was comparable to the NEO-PI-R. The mean convergent correlation between the facet scales was .73. The scales with shorter and grammatically simpler items tended to have higher internal consistency. In an independent cross-validation sample the initial results were generally replicated. The scales also demonstrated an adequate cross-observer agreement. It is concluded that the EPIP-NEO, as a more readable personality inventory compared to the NEO-PI-R, is suitable for a wider range of samples with different levels of reading skills.

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