1 Personality Assessment White Paper

Personality Assessment
White Paper
In partnership with Psycholate
Introduction

The IPIP repository................................................................................................... 5

Workable Personality Assessment...................................................................... 6

Conclusion

References
3 Personality Assessment White Paper

Introduction

Arguably, people differ in terms of how they feel, think and act. Personality testing, as a systematic
practice started around 100 years ago, initially as a means to identify soldiers prone to mental
breakdowns during battle (Gibby and Zickar; 2008), and a little later as a means to predict
maladjusting employees who could contribute to workplace disturbances (Gibby and Zickar; 2008).

Currently, according to Weiner and Greene (2008), research on personality testing seems
intensified. Perhaps this would not have been possible without the reliability and validity some
personality tests seem to have. A good example of this consistency is that several tests provide
support for a five factor personality model.

The Big Five personality model was initiated through a lexical approach. Klages (1929) suggested
that personality aspects are encoded and labeled in language and more precisely in words. In that
vein, Klages identified and created lists with thousands of words labeling aspects of personality.
Later, Allport employed a similar research paradigm in the English language (Nicholson; 1998).
Cattell’s work used statistical procedures involving factor analyses in order to meaningfully group
these lexical terms, resulting in a 16-factor model of personality (Boyle et. al; 2016). A factor analysis
is a statistical tool that finds correlations between variables (words) and latent variables (personality
traits and scales). So, Cattell was able to find which words were related to what traits of personality,
and go on to perform a data reduction on these words. Through this data reduction, he was able to
find big aspects of personality.

Using the same methodology, Fiske (1949) suggested that only five factors could be replicated
statistically. Tupes and Christal (1957) also found five factors, and these findings were confirmed by
numerous other studies (Sold; 1999). Finally, McCrae and Costa (1987) labeled the five dimensions
as they are used today. The work of McCrae and Costa is focused on measuring the Big Five
personality model using a questionnaire called NEO. Several revisions of NEO were created over the
decades, with adaptations made for differing environments and practices.

Costa and McCrae (2008) report that the NEO scales correlate with scales from the Minnesota
Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI; Hathaway & McKinley, 1983; Siegler et al., 1990), the Millon
Clinical Multiaxial Inventory (Lehne, 2002), and other questionnaires.

Costa and McCrae (2008) also report that the NEO scales have been proven useful in predicting
vocational interests (De Fruyt & Mervielde, 1997), attachment styles (Shaver & Brennan, 1992), and
psychiatric diagnoses of personality disorders (McCrae, Yang, et al., 2001).
A search of the term NEO-PI alone in Google Scholar, returns around 65,000 articles. Therefore, an
extensive review of its reliability, validity, and practical use, is beyond the scope of this document,
although further reading is available.
 The IPIP
Repository
5 Personality Assessment White Paper

The suggestion that personality can be described in a meaningful way by five big aspects, is based
on work performed over many decades. The labels of these five aspects are:

1. Extraversion vs introversion

2. Agreeableness vs criticality

3. Openness to experience vs cautiousness, consistency

4. Conscientiousness vs carelessness, extravagance

5. Neuroticism vs resilience, confidence, emotional stability

As mentioned, several questionnaires were developed in order to measure these five aspects. The
International Personality Item Pool (Goldberg 1999; Goldberg et. al. 2006), commonly referred to
as IPIP, is an ongoing research program set up to generate and empirically evaluate open source
items that can be used to test models of personality using established scales and traits. These tests
include the NEO and the NEO-PI scales. The NEO-PI should not be confused with the IPIP NEO-
PI-R. The first uses proprietary items, whilst the second uses public domain items. The Workable
personality assessment is based on the IPIP NEO-PI-R.

The IPIP NEO-PI-R test, like the NEO-PI or the NEO-PI-R, measures personality traits, and each trait
has several scales. For instance, the measurement of neuroticism depends on the measurements
of anxiety, anger, depression, self-conscientiousness, immoderation and vulnerability. This assumes
that neuroticism, like any other higher order factor, is a complex aspect in personality which is in turn
based on other sub factors, and these sub factors are in turn measured through several questions.
6 Personality Assessment White Paper

Workable Personality Assessment

The Workable personality assessment, based on the IPIP NEO-PI-R, was further customized for
the needs of Workable. Table 1 shows a concise summary of what was done. In this table, column
n shows the number of questions from the IPIP NEO-PI-R that were used verbatim in the modified
questionnaire. In our customization, we used the Big Five personality traits, as in IPIP NEO-PI-R,
along with most of the scales from the IPIP NEO-PI-R. In some scales, due to changes in the
questions, we could not retain the same scale labels, and changes in scale labels were made for
that reason. Overall, the changes were made to the IPIP NEO-PI-R to improve brevity and focus on
personnel selection.

In order to test for reliability of the modified questionnaire, two pilot studies were performed with
215 and 1497 participants respectively. The Crombach alpha values for both studies are shown in
Table 1 in columns α1 and α2. In the second pilot study, the Kaiser Criterion suggested the extraction
of one factor only, suggesting that the dimensions could not be further broken down.
7 Personality Assessment White Paper

Table 1. IPIP NEOPIR scales and Workable scales

Trait Scale IPIP NEO-PI-R a Scale Workable test n a1 a2

Agreeableness A1 Trust .82 Trusting 2 .81 .76

A2 Morality .75 Moral 0 .64 .63

A3 Altruism .77 Caring 3 .77 .60

A4 Cooperation .73 Compromising 0 .41

A5 Modesty .77 Modest 4 .76 .68

A6 Sympathy .75

Conscientiousness C1 Self-efficacy .78 Self-efficient 3 .71 .76

C2 Orderliness .82 Orderly 0 .78

C3 Dutifulness .71 Reliable 0 .55 .65

C4 Achievement-striving .78 Achievement-striving 3 .76 .60

C5 Self-discipline .85 Self-disciplined 4 .66 .66

C6 Cautiousness .76 Cautious 0 .76

Extraversion E1 Friendliness .87 Friendly 4 .81 .72

E2 Gregariousness .79

E3 Assertiveness .84 Assertive 1 .78 .76

E4 Activity level .71 Industrious 2 .50 .53

E5 Excitement-seeking .78

E6 Cheerfulness .81 Optimist 1 .70 .71

8 Personality Assessment White Paper

Trait Scale IPIP NEO-PI-R a Scale Workable test n a1 a2

Neuroticism N1 Anxiety .83 Calm 4 .75 .72

N2 Anger .88 Even-tempered 4 .88 .78

N3 Depression .88

N4 Self-consciousness .80 Socially confident 2 .80 .72

N5 Immoderation .77

N6 Vulnerability .82 Relaxed 4 .71 .76

Openness-to- O1 Imagination .83 Imaginative 3 .78 .66

experience
O2 Artistic interests .84

O3 Emotionality .81 Empathetic 0 .66

O4 Adventurousness .77 Creative / Innovative 4 .70 .62

O5 Intellect .86 Theoretical 4 .71 .68

O6 Liberalism .86
9 Personality Assessment White Paper

Conclusion

The questionnaire developed for Workable has consistent traits with the Big Five personality model.
We adopted the majority of scales used in IPIP NEO-PI-R, and changed the phrasing of some
questions. After making these changes, the results suggested acceptable reliability, however work is
underway to improve those results.

Personality tests may be employed or tested in clinical settings and situations where people are not
incentivized to provide favorable responses. In this case, the test is used for personnel selection.
For that reason, relevant changes were made to the phrasing of questions, so that each item is still
normally distributed. This allows us to retain good discriminability in participant scores. Nonetheless,
the results are still monitored and relevant changes will be performed if the need arises.
10 Personality Assessment White Paper

References

Boyle J. G., Stankov, L., Martin G. N., Petrides K. V., Eysenck M. W., Ortetf, G. (2016). Hans J.
Eysenck and Raymond B. Cattell on intelligence and personality. Personality and Individual
Differences. 103 40-47. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2016.04.029.

Costa, T. P., McCrae, R. R., David, A. D. (1991). Facet Scales for Agreeableness and
Conscientiousness: A Revision of the NEO Personality Inventory. Personality and Individual
Differences, 12(9), 887-898. https://doi.org/10.1016/0191-8869(91)90177-D

Costa, Paul & McCrae, Robert. (2008). The revised NEO personality inventory (NEO-PI-R). The
SAGE Handbook of Personality Theory and Assessment. 2. 179-198. 10.4135/9781849200479.n9

De Fruyt, F., & Mervielde, I. (1997). The Five-Factor Model of personality and Holland’s RIASEC
interest types. Personality and Individual Differences, 23, 87–103.

Gibby, R. E., & Zickar, M. J. (2008). A history of the early days of personality testing in American
industry: An obsession with adjustment. History of Psychology, 11(3), 164–184. https://doi.
org/10.1037/a0013041

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.

Goldberg, L. R., Johnson, J. A., Eber, H. W., Hogan, R., Ashton, M. C., Cloninger, C. R., & Gough,
H. C. (2006). The International Personality Item Pool and the future of public-domain personality
measures. Journal of Research in Personality, 40, 84-96.

Hathaway, S. R., & McKinley, J. C. (1983). The Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory
manual . New York: Psychological Corporation.

Klages, L. & Johnson, W. H. (1929). The Science of Character. Mind. 38(152), 513-520

Lehne, G. K. (2002). Th e NEO-PI and MCMI in the forensic evaluation of sex off enders. In P. T.
Costa, Jr., & T. A. Widiger (Eds.), Personality disorders and the Five-Factor Model of personality
(pp. 269–282). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.
11 Personality Assessment White Paper

McCrae, R. R., Costa, T. P. (1991). The NEO Personality Inventory: Using the Five-Factor
ModeI in Counseling. Journal of Counseling & Development. 69(4). 367-372. https://doi.
org/10.1002/j.1556-6676.1991.tb01524.

McCrae, R. R., & Costa, P. T. (1987). Validation of the five-factor model of personality across
instruments and observers. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 52(1), 81–90. https://
doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.52.1.81

McCrae, R. R., Yang, J., Costa, P. T., Jr., Dai, X., Yao, S., Cai, T., et al. (2001). Personality profiles
and the prediction of categorical personality disorders. Journal of Personality, 69, 121–145.
12 Personality Assessment White Paper

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