Versions of IPIP Measures around the World Wide Web
Because the IPIP is in the public domain, anybody can distribute
paper-and-pencil copies of IPIP measures or administer online versions
of IPIP measures without asking for permission or guidance from the
researchers who created and maintain the IPIP website.
In some cases, others have asked for our assistance and guidance in
implementing IPIP materials, but in many cases, they have simply used
IPIP materials on their own. In the latter cases, we cannot guarantee
the quality and validity of what others have done with the IPIP.
High-Quality Implementations of IPIP Measures
We are aware of some
excellent implementations of the IPIP. For example, Jordan B. Peterson,
who co-authored an article on the development of the 100-item IPIP 10
Big-Five Aspects Scales (BFAS; DeYoung, Quilty, & Peterson,
(2007), has created, with Daniel M. Higgins and Robert O.
Pihl, a website where you can complete the scales online and
receive a narrative report describing your personality. The site, Understand
Myself, has helped thousands of individuals make informed
choices about their
education, career, and life in general. The cost for taking the BFAS,
$9.95, seems reasonable for this data-driven, evidence-based
online personality assessment.
If you are looking to use an IPIP-based inventory for personnel selection and development, you can try the site HR Potentials, which is free for educational, research, and non-profit use.
The Open-Source Psychometrics Project has implemented the IPIP Big-Five Factor Marker (BFFM)
scales into a free online inventory. The 50-item BFFM inventory is probably
the most widely-used of all IPIP measures because it has been used as a
sample questionnaire for measuring the five major personality factors
since the IPIP website first came online in 1998. Over a million
persons have completed the Open-Source Psychometrics Project version of
the BFFM inventory.
The IPIP consultant (Johnson, 2014) developed online versions of the 120-item and 300-item
IPIP representations of the NEO PI-R (Costa & McCrae, 1992). Over a
million persons have completed either the shorter or longer version of
the IPIP-NEO,
which has been online since 1996. Because Johnson has freely
distributed the computer code for online administration of the
IPIP-NEO, numerous individuals have used the code for creating their
own online versions of the IPIP-NEO. To the extent that these copycat
sites have faithfully used Johnson's code, they should produce the same
results as the original online IPIP-NEO. It has not been feasible for
Johnson to locate and quality-check all of these other sites, so we
cannot vouch for their accuracy. However, one of the best online
implementations of the 120-item IPIP-NEO can be completed at no cost at
https://bigfive-test.com/
. This implementation is available in 18 different languages and has
been completed by over 4 million persons. If you are a programmer who
is interested in the code for this site, it is freely available at GitHub.
Anders Vik Lysne has created a website where you can complete an online version of the IPIP-HEXACO, a 60-item personality inventory that yields scores for factors similar to the Big 5 personality traits plus a score for Honesty-Humility. The inventory also yields scores for several narrower facets within each of the six factors. Lysne's online IPIP-HEXACO, which can be completed at no cost, produces an array of scores and graphs and also provides additional information about personality in general.
The Synthetic Aperture Personality Assessment (SAPA) is a very sophisticated online assessment that provides a comprehensive, color-coded profile of your personality. It is unique in that the items you are asked to respond to will depend on your answers to previous items. This allows for the generation of a complete personality profile using the minimum number of items needed to create the profile. This free assessment takes between 15-25 minutes to complete.
Finally, there is the colorful and fun Do You Know YOU? test by Zain-Alabdin Tawfiq. This implementation of the 50-item Big-Five Factor markers is still under development with a shorter track record than the measures described above. It presently provides a minimal amount of information about a respondent's standing on the five major personality factors. Nonetheless, this free assessment seems to be valid and provides useful connections between your personality scores and career choices.
One Problematic version of the IPIP-BFFM Scales
Unfortunately, because the IPIP is in
the public domain and developers can do anything they want with the
IPIP, sometimes problematic versions of IPIP measures have appeared on
the World Wide Web. Perhaps the most troublesome of such measures has
been an early implementation of the Big-Five Factor Marker (BFFM)
scales. This implementation appeared in 2011 by the Open-Source
Psychometrics Projects, which at that time was called
personality-testing.info (that URL is no longer in service.) While we
list the current version of the BFFM scales at the Open-Source
Psychometric Projects among the high-quality implementations of IPIP
Measures, the original version at personality-testing.info contained a
number of serious problems that have confused countless users. That problematic version of the BFFM scales can still be found in PDF form
on the Open-Source Psychometric Projects website. Because the PDF lists
the IPIP home page at the top of the document, we frequently get
inquiries about the scoring and interpretation of what we now call the
"rogue version" of the BFFM scales. One reason that we created the
current web page was to describe three major problems with this rogue
version.
The
first problem is that the rogue version uses scale
labels from Costa & McCrae's (1992) Five-Factor Model instead of
the lexical Big-Five Model (Goldberg, 1992). This means that the fourth
factor of the Big-Five model, Emotional Stability, is labeled
Neuroticism (which is the opposite of Emotional Stability), and the
fifth factor, Intellect, is labeled
Openness to Experience. One can work around simply by using the proper
labels. Note that the formula in the PDF for scoring factor 4 actually
produces scores in
the direction of Emotional Stability instead of Neuroticism,
despite the score being labeled "N" for Neuroticism. (Follow
this link for a more detailed explanation of the differences between
the Five-Factor Model and the Big Five, under the heading "Finding a
Multi-Scale Personality Inventory.")
The second problem is
that the rogue version uses an atypical scoring system for IPIP
measures. The standard scoring procedure for IPIP scales is to code
+keyed item responses from 1 to 5 and -keyed item responses from 5 to
1, and then sum all of the item responses, as explained at https://ipip.ori.org/newScoringInstructions.htm . The standard scoring key for the BFFM scales is here: https://ipip.ori.org/newBigFive5broadKey.htm
. But instead of recoding the -keyed items and summing all of the items
responses, the rogue version sums the +keyed items, subtracts the
-keyed items, and adds a constant. The constant that appears in the
five scoring formulas in the PDF is equal to (6 x the number of -keyed
items) - 10. So, for example, the first equation for E has 5 -keyed
items, so the constant is (6x5)-10 = 20. The second equation for A has
4 -keyed items, so (6x4)-10 = 14, and so forth. Multiplying the number
of -keyed items by 6 is mathematically the same as scoring -keyed items
from 5 to 1 and adding them instead of subtracting them. The reason the
rogue version subtracts 10 from the constant is that this makes scores
range from 0 to 40 instead of the usual 10 to 50 with the standard IPIP
scoring method.
The third problem is that the graph at the
bottom of the PDF showing the means and distributions of scores uses
mean item scores (on a 1-5 scale) rather than scores based on the sum
of 10 items. For example, someone who scored a 40 out of a possible 50
on Intellect (which is a 30 out of a possible 40 on Openness if you use
the rogue formula) would be represented by a mean item score of 40 ÷ 10
items or 4. That is why all of the scores in the graph range from 1 to
5.
Needless to say, this rogue version has confused countless
people. That is why we recommend using the scoring keys and procedures
on the IPIP website instead of the formulas in the PDF of the rogue
version.
References
Costa, P. T., Jr., & McCrae, R. R. (1992). Revised NEO personality inventory (NEO PI-R™) and NEO five-factor inventory (NEO-FFI): Professional manual. Odessa, FL: Psychological Assessment Resources.
DeYoung, C. G., Quilty, L.
C., & Peterson, J. B. (2007). Between facets and domains: 10
aspects of the Big Five. Journal
of Personality and Social Psychology, 93, 880-896. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.93.5.880
Goldberg, L. R. (1992). The development of markers for the Big-Five factor structure. Psychological Assessment, 4, 26-42. https://doi.org/10.1037/1040-3590.4.1.26
Johnson,
J. A. (2014). Measuring thirty facets of the five factor model with a
120-item public domain inventory: Development of the IPIP-NEO-120. Journal of Research in Personality, 51, 78-89. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jrp.2014.05.003
[Page created 02-21-2022, updated 12-04-2022]
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