Measuring personality traits with ultra-short scales: A study of the ...

More documents

Recommendations

Info

2 E. Romero et al. / Personality and Individual Differences xxx (2012) xxx–xxx In this study we examined the psychometric properties of the TIPI in a sample of Spanish adults. Although the TIPI has been used in Spain (e.g. Palomera & Bracket, 2006), its suitability as a measuring instrument in Spanish has not yet been examined systematically. There have only been a few pilot studies on small samples in South America (e.g. Dematteis, 2009). The data collected in Spain will provide new insight into the psychometric properties of a potentially promising instrument for integrating personality research across cultures. For the TIPI, this study analyzes: (a) reliability (internal consistency and test–retest), (b) self–other agreement, (c) the factorial structure of the items, (d) convergence with the NEO-PI-R (a well-established measure of the Five Factors), and (e) criterionrelated validity, examined in terms of correlations with Subjective Well-Being (SWB) and Risk-Taking. The SWB construct has been widely examined in the literature on personality traits. Positive Affect, Negative Affect and Satisfaction with Life, the three commonly recognized components of SWB (Diener, 2000; Lucas, Diener, & Suh, 1996) have been the subject of numerous studies on the Big Five and psychological health (DeNeve & Cooper, 1998; Romero, Gómez-Fraguela, & Villar, 2012; Steel, Schmidt, & Schultz, 2008). Previous studies suggest that Neuroticism/Emotional Stability is one of the strongest predictors of SWB, and especially of its ‘‘Negative Affect’’ component (.54 when corrected for unreliability, in the meta-analysis by Steel et al., 2008); Extraversion generally presents significant though somewhat weaker correlations with SWB, and is especially related to the ‘‘Positive Affect’’ component (.44 when corrected for unreliability, in Steel et al., 2008). Agreeableness and Conscientiousness tend to exhibit more modest correlations than Extraversion or Neuroticism, and correlate similarly with the various components of SWB. Openness presents the weakest correlations with SWB. Considering the three components of SWB, previous studies have repeatedly shown strong correlations between Positive Affect and Extraversion and between Negative Affect and Neuroticism. Satisfaction with Life appears to be less linked to a specific trait, and it generally presents significant but more moderate correlations with all Big Five dimensions. These findings have provided some guidance for our hypothesis that this pattern of results will also be evident in the TIPI results. Just as Well-Being is a cognitive-emotional criterion, Risk-Taking disposition is rather behavioral and more closely related to the inhibition–disinhibition poles, which are crucial elements of important trait models (see Zuckerman, Kuhlman, Joireman, Teta, & Kraft, 1993). Risk-Taking has been extensively studied from psychobiological models, and findings indicate a positive relationship with the dimensions of sociability, impulsivity and sensation seeking (Zuckerman & Kuhlman, 2000). Given the specific location of these psychobiological traits within the Big Five model (Romero, Gómez-Fraguela, Luengo, & Sobral, 2003; Zuckerman et al., 1993), prior results lead us to hypothesize that Risk-Taking will be positively related to Extraversion and Openness, and negatively related to Conscientiousness. who were recruited for a voluntary study on personality using a snowball procedure in the close environment of Education and Psychology undergraduates. Of this latter group, 18.23% of the participants had completed only primary education, 67.05% had completed secondary education and 14.07% had completed a university degree. The instrument was administered in the form of a questionnaire booklet which the participants were asked to complete and return within 10 days. A brief personality report was provided in reward. A subsample of 192 undergraduates also participated in another round of data collection, 6 weeks after the first, that was used to calculate test–retest reliability. A second subsample of 148 undergraduates were instructed to ask people who knew them well to rate them on the TIPI scale in order to calculate self–other convergence. The rating was done by a close relative in 74.32% of the cases and by a close friend with a mean length of acquaintance of 5.32 years (SD = 3.21) in the remainder. All data were obtained between 2008 and 2010. 2.2. Variables and instruments 2.2.1. Ten Item Personality Inventory (TIPI) The Ten Item Personality Inventory (TIPI) (Gosling et al., 2003) was translated into Spanish by two translators who initially worked separately and were subsequently asked to work together on the items until reaching complete agreement. The TIPI is comprised of 10 items, each consisting of a pair of descriptors that were scored from 1 (strongly disagree) to 7 (strongly agree). Each dimension of the Big Five (E – Extraversion, A – Agreeableness, C – Conscientiousness, ES – Emotional Stability and O – Openness) was represented by two items, one stated in a way that represents the positive pole of the dimension and the other stated in a way that represents the negative pole. 2.2.2. NEO-PI-R The Spanish version (TEA Ediciones, 1999) of the NEO-PI-R (Costa & McCrae, 1992) was used to look for convergence with the TIPI. The NEO-PI-R is widely used in Spain and has been validated by many studies (Aluja, García, & García, 2002; Romero, Villar, Luengo, & Gómez-Fraguela, 2009). In our study, alpha values were .81 for Extraversion, .80 for Agreeableness, .86 for Conscientiousness, .91 for Neuroticism, and .78 for Openness. 2.2.3. Well-Being In this study, we measured the three most popular components of Subjective Well-Being—Positive Affect, Negative Affect and Satisfaction with Life—using the PANAS scales (Watson, Clark, & Tellegen, 1988) and the Satisfaction with Life Scale (Diener, Emmons, Larsen, & Griffin, 1985). Both instruments were previously translated and adapted for Spain, and their reliability and validity are supported by research (Romero et al., 2012; Sandín et al., 1999). The resulting alpha values were .77 for Positive Affect, .85 for Negative Affect and .71 for Satisfaction with Life. 2. Material and methods 2.1. Participants A total of 442 males, 736 females and 3 persons who did not state their gender participated in the study. The age range of the participants was 21–62 years, with an average age of 35.61 (SD = 6.27). Among them, 243 participants were undergraduates pursuing upper-level courses in Educational Sciences in a public university of Galicia (NW Spain) and the remaining 938 participants (79.42%) were adults from among the general population 2.2.4. Risk-Taking We translated into Spanish and used the Revised DOSPERT scale that was developed by Blais and Weber (2006). The scale consists of 30 items scored on a seven-point scale from ‘‘Extremely unlikely’’ to ‘‘Extremely likely’’, in order to assess the participants’ disposition to engage in risk-taking behaviors (e.g. ‘‘Going camping in the wilderness’’ or ‘‘Engaging in unprotected sex’’). Although the scale was originally developed to measure risk taking in specific domains, for the sake of parsimony we aggregated the 30 items into a total score that was used as an overall measure of Risk- Taking. The resulting alpha coefficient was .86. Please cite this article in press as: Romero, E., et al. Measuring personality traits with ultra-short scales: A study of the Ten Item Personality Inventory (TIPI) in a Spanish sample. Personality and Individual Differences (2012), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2012.03.035
E. Romero et al. / Personality and Individual Differences xxx (2012) xxx–xxx 3 3. Results 3.1. Descriptives, reliabilities and self–other agreement Table 1 lists the mean scores and standard deviations for the Big Five in our Spanish sample as assessed with the TIPI, along with Cronbach’s alpha coefficients, test–retest reliabilities after 6 weeks and correlations between self-reports and others’ ratings. The mean scores of the Spanish sample were somewhat lower than those of the overall sample in the original study (Gosling et al., 2003), but Spaniards scored higher on interpersonal scales (4.83 vs. 4.44 in Extraversion and 5.73 vs. 5.23 in Agreeableness). The rank order of the means was similar to that of the original sample, with Agreeableness, Conscientiousness and Openness exhibiting the highest means, while Extraversion and Emotional Stability had the lowest means. As in the original sample, Emotional Stability, Extraversion and Conscientiousness had the highest standard deviations. Internal consistency was lower than in other studies. The average alpha of .50 for Time 1 in our study was lower than the .55 average reported by Gosling et al. (2003), or the .57 average reported by Muck et al. (2007). Emotional Stability presented the highest and Agreeableness the lowest alpha values. In contrast, our results showed higher test–retest reliabilities, with a .72 average value that is identical to that of Gosling et al. (2003). The scores for Emotional Stability were the most stable and the Agreeableness scale exhibited the lowest test–retest reliability. Self–other correlations ranged from .42 to .61, with an average value of .52. Agreeableness and Conscientiousness showed the lowest and highest agreement, respectively. 3.2. Internal structure: factorial distribution of TIPI items The estimation problems that occur when using less than three indicators per factor in confirmatory models (Hofmans, Kuppens, & Allik, 2008; Kline, 2005) led us to use an exploratory approach to the TIPI factor structure. Table 2 shows the results of the factor analysis using Maximum Likelihood with Varimax rotation. Based on the theoretical structure of the instrument and the pattern of the scree test, five factors were retained for rotation which jointly accounted for 69.72% of the total variance. The items were grouped according to the original structure, with the exception of one Agreeableness item that had its highest loading in Conscientiousness. 3.3. Convergence with NEO-PI-R Table 3 shows the convergence of the TIPI and the NEO-PI-R domains. Convergent correlations between the two ranged from .36 for Agreeableness to .64 for Conscientiousness. Discrimination was poorest for Openness (.38 correlation with NEO Extraversion), and Agreeableness (.23 correlation with NEO Conscientiousness and .20 correlation with NEO Neuroticism). Nonetheless, all TIPI scales showed the highest correlation with their corresponding domains in the NEO-PI-R. The highest TIPI inter-scale correlation was found between Extraversion and Openness (.29). Correlations above .20 were also found between Agreeableness and Conscientiousness as well as between Agreeableness and Emotional Stability. In any case, all correlations were below .36, the lowest convergent correlation between the TIPI and the NEO-PI-R. The absolute mean correlation was .09 among TIPI scales and .24 among NEO-PI-R scales. Overall, the correlation pattern among TIPI scales was similar to that found among NEO-PI-R scales. One exception was Neuroticism/Emotional Stability, which correlated with Extraversion and Conscientiousness in the NEO-PI-R but not in the TIPI. Table 1 Descriptive statistics for the TIPI scales (N = 1181), reliabilities and self–other agreement. Mean SD Alpha time 1 Alpha time 2 (n = 192) 3.4. Correlations with relevant external criteria Test–retest reliability (6 weeks) (n = 192) Extraversion 4.83 1.40 .54 .61 .79 .53 Agreeableness 5.73 .92 .38 .44 .52 .42 Conscientiousness 5.15 1.35 .54 .51 .69 .61 Emotional 4.01 1.54 .59 .59 .83 .59 stability Openness 4.92 .94 .48 .46 .78 .45 Self–other agreement (n = 148) Table 2 Factor analysis (Maximum Likelihood with Varimax rotation) restricted to a 5-factor solution for the TIPI items. ES C E O A ES-Calm, emotionally stable (Tranquilo, .98 .12 .06 .11 .00 emocionalmente estable) ES-Anxious, easily upset (Ansioso, que .45 .01 .06 .13 .10 fácilmente se altera) C-Dependable, self-disciplined (Fiable, .02 .73 .05 .00 .03 autodisciplinado) C-Disorganized, careless .03 .55 .05 .12 .07 (Desorganizado, descuidado) A-Sympathetic, warm (Considerado, .10 .42 .00 .10 .21 afectuoso) E-Reserved, quiet (Reservado, callado) .01 .04 .97 .19 .00 E-Extraverted, enthusiastic .14 .16 .43 .17 .07 (Extravertido, entusiasta) O-Open to new experiences, complex .01 .00 .00 .72 .05 (Abierto a nuevas experiencias, complejo) O-Conventional, uncreative .04 .08 .12 .47 .06 (Convencional, poco creativo) A-Critical, quarrelsome (Que critica a los demás, conflictivo) .14 .19 .03 .02 .65 Note: In parenthesis are the TIPI items translated into Spanish. Loadings above .40 have been highlighted in bold. Finally, the nomological network of the constructs measured by the TIPI was studied by examining their correlations with variables that had previously been related to personality traits. Table 4 shows both the zero-order correlations and correlations corrected for unreliability. Positive Affect is seen to have the highest correlation with Extraversion and Negative Affect has the highest correlation with Neuroticism. Satisfaction with Life shows significant but more moderate correlations with all traits but does not appear to have a particularly strong link to any specific trait. Regarding the magnitude of correlations, the average uncorrected correlation between the TIPI scales and SWB was .16, while the average corrected correlation was .26. The lowest correlation was that of Agreeableness and Positive Affect (.06 uncorrected or .11 corrected). The highest correlations were found between Extraversion and Positive Affect (.27 uncorrected or .42 corrected) and especially between Emotional Stability and Negative Affect ( .51 uncorrected or .72 corrected). In general, the Emotional Stability and Extraversion scales showed the greatest correlation with SWB: with average correlations of .30 (.44 corrected) for Emotional Stability and .18 (.28 corrected) for Extraversion. Openness and Conscientiousness displayed the weakest correlation with SWB; both had an average correlation of .10 (.17 corrected). Extraversion, Conscientiousness and Openness were the dimensions most strongly related to Risk-Taking, which is clearly consistent with results from studies on risky behaviors (e.g. Romero Please cite this article in press as: Romero, E., et al. Measuring personality traits with ultra-short scales: A study of the Ten Item Personality Inventory (TIPI) in a Spanish sample. Personality and Individual Differences (2012), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2012.03.035
Page 1: Personality and Individual Differen
Page 5: E. Romero et al. / Personality and

Measuring personality traits with ultra-short scales: A study of the ...

You also want an ePaper? Increase the reach of your titles

Delete template?

Save as template?