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Big Five Inventory

The Big Five Inventory (BFI) is a valid and reliable psychodiagnostic instrument designed to measure five dimensions of human personality. It is relatively brief for a multidimensional personality inventory (44 items in total) and consists of short sentences with a relatively accessible vocabulary. Specifically, it measures the following dimensions of human personality:

  • Neuroticism
  • Agreeableness
  • Extraversion
  • Conscientiousness
  • Openness

Length of completion

The entire questionnaire will take approximately 10 minutes to complete.

Individualized feedback for the respondent

After completing the questionnaire, the respondent will learn about themselves and how they stand on each personality dimension.

Keywords

Big Five, personality, extraversion, neuroticism, agreeableness, conscientiousness, openness

Scoring and interpretation

Extraversion: 1, 6R, 11, 16, 21R, 26, 31R, 36. Agreeableness: 2R, 7, 12R, 17, 22, 27R, 32, 37R, 42. Conscientiousness: 3, 8R, 13, 18R, 23R, 28, 33, 38, 43R. Neuroticism: 4, 9R, 14, 19, 24R, 29, 34R, 39. Openness: 5, 10, 15, 20, 25, 30, 35R, 40, 41R, 44. Before beginning the assessment, it is necessary to convert the scores for the reverse items (denoted by R after the item number) that measure the opposite poles of the traits. Summing the scores yields a total score for each dimension. A higher score indicates a higher trait measure.

Response Scale

The BFI method uses a Likert-type scale for responses, where the proband expresses their agreement on a five-point scale (1 = strongly disagree, 2 = rather disagree, 3 = neither agree nor disagree, 4 = rather agree, 5 = strongly agree).

References

Benet-Martínez, V., & John, O. P. (1998). Los Cinco Grandes across cultures and ethnic groups: Multitrait-multimethod analyses of the Big Five in Spanish and English. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 75(3), 729–750. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.75.3.729

Hřebíčková, M., Jelínek, M., Blatný, M., Brom, C., Burešová, I., Graf, S., Mejzlíková, T., Vazsonyi, A., & Zábrodská, K. (2016). Big Five Inventory: Základní psychometrické charakteristiky české verze BFI-44 a BFI-10. Československá psychologie, 60(6), 567-583. https://dostal.vyzkum-psychologie.cz/soubory/BFI2.pdf

John, O. P., & Srivastava, S. (1999). The Big-Five trait taxonomy: History, measurement, and theoretical perspectives. In L. A. Pervin & O. P. John (Eds.), Handbook of personality: Theory and research (102–138). http://jenni.uchicago.edu/econ-psych-traits/John_Srivastava_1995_big5.pdf

John, O. P., Naumann, L. P., & Soto, C. J. (2008). Paradigm Shift to the Integrative Big-Five Trait Taxonomy: History, Measurement, and Conceptual Issues. In O. P. John, R. W. Robins, & L. A. Pervin (Eds.), Handbook of personality: Theory and research (114-158). https://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~johnlab/bigfive.htm