Items in the Mini-IPIPa


Factor I Surgency or Extraversion (Alpha = .77)
+ keyed Am the life of the party.
  Talk to a lot of different people at parties.
   
– keyed Don't talk a lot.
  Keep in the background.

 


Factor II Agreeableness (Alpha = .70)
+ keyed Sympathize with others' feelings.
  Feel others' emotions.
   
– keyed Am not really interested in others.
  Am not interested in other people's problems.


Factor III Conscientiousness (Alpha = .69)
+ keyed Get chores done right away.
  Like order.
   
– keyed Often forget to put things back in their proper place.
  Make a mess of things.

Factor IV Neuroticismb (Alpha = .68)

+ keyed Have frequent mood swings.
  Get upset easily.
   
– keyed Am relaxed most of the time.
  Seldom feel blue.

Factor V Intellect or Imagination (Alpha = .65)

+ keyed Have a vivid imagination.
   
– keyed Have difficulty understanding abstract ideas.
  Am not interested in abstract ideas.
  Do not have a good imagination.

aThe abstract of the article on the construction and validation of this measure (Donnellan, et al., 2006) describes the Mini-IPIP as "a 20-item short form of the 50-item International Personality Item Pool—Five-Factor Model measure (Goldberg, 1999)." "The Mini-IPIP" was not the best choice of a label for this inventory because the IPIP is a pool of several thousand items, not the name of a particular inventory (see the page on citing and referring to IPIP scales). Furthermore, the Mini-IPIP is based on the 50-item IPIP representation of the Big-Five lexical markers, not, as its authors state, the 50-item IPIP measure of the Five-Factor Model (see the page that describes the difference between the lexical Big Five and the Five Factor Model). Finally, although "(Goldberg, 1999)" is a valid citation for the IPIP as a whole (again, see the page on citing and referring to IPIP scales), neither the 50-item lexical Big-Five IPIP inventory nor the 50-item Five-Factor Model IPIP inventory is mentioned in Goldberg (1999). The reference for the original lexical scales on which the IPIP lexical Big-Five inventory is based is Goldberg (1992). Should one choose to use the Mini-IPIP in research, one should be aware that the Donnellan, et al. (2006) description of the constructs assessed by inventory are not wholly accurate.

bThe authors of  the Mini-IPIP chose to score the Emotional Stability scale from the lexical Big Five in reverse and to use the label Neuroticism from the Five-Factor Model for this scale. The current consensus is that Emotional Stability and Neuroticism are opposite ends of the same dimension, or nearly so. Again, should one decide to use the Mini-IPIP in research, one should be aware that Donnellan, et al.'s (2006) scoring and conceptualization of this factor differ from that of the original IPIP scale on which it was based.

References

Donnellan, M. B., Oswald, F. L., Baird, B. M., & Lucas, R. E. (2006). The Mini-IPIP scales: Tiny-yet-effective measures of the Big Five factors of personality. Psychological Assessment, 18, 192-203.

Goldberg, L. R. (1992). The development of markers for the Big-Five factor structure. Psychological Assessment, 4, 26-42.

Goldberg, L. R. (1999). A broad-bandwidth, public domain, personality inventory measuring the lower-level facets of several five-factor models. In I. Mervielde, I. Deary, F. De Fruyt, & F. Ostendorf (Eds.), Personality Psychology in Europe, Vol. 7 (pp. 7-28). Tilburg, The Netherlands: Tilburg University Press.


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