Development of a Brief Version of the Personality Inventory IPIP Revised: Control of the Acquiescence Response Bias

Abstract

In recent years, brief measures of the five personality factors have been developed; however, the practical gain of time provided by the brief versions may imply weaker psychometric properties of the instruments. To maintain adequate psychometric properties in the construction of brief scales, theoretical and empirical criteria should be used in the selection of items, and response biases such as acquiescence (AC) should be minimized. The term AC refers to people’s tendency to agree with positive statements, regardless of their content. The main purpose of the present study is to develop a brief public domain instrument (30 items) to measure the five personality factors in the Latin American population, controlling the AC response bias. The sample consisted of 910 participants, 543 women (59.6 %) and 367 men (40.3 %), age range 15-80 years (M = 29.52; DT = 12.25) from the city of Córdoba, Argentina. For the validation process, a convergence study with the five NEO-FFI scales, an analysis of group differences according to the participants’ sex and age, and a predictive validity study regarding recreational activities (drug use, irresponsibility, friendship, erudition/creativity, and communication) were performed. The results indicate that the IPIP-R-30 presents a five-factor factorial structure, adequate reliability indices of both internal consistency and temporal stability, evidence of convergent validity with the NEO-FFI scales, evidence of group differences as regards sex and age, and frequency predictive validity of different categories of specific activities. Thus, it can be concluded that the IPP-R-30 is a valid tool for assessing personality factors in our environment, with scores free of AC bias.

Keywords

• Cinco grandes factores de la personalidad, inventario, IPIP, aquiescencia, sesgo de respuesta.