Toward More Readable Big Five Personality Inventories

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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.