Big Five Model Assessment

Introduction

The Big Five model of personality traits derives its strength from two lines of research, the psycholexical and the factoranalytic tradition, from which the interchangeably used names Big Five model and Five Factor model respectively originate. The two traditions have produced remarkably similar five-factor structures that mark a point of no return for personality psychology. An extensive review of history and theory with respect to the Big Five can be found in De Raad (2000).

The Big Five factors have been endorsed with a distinctive status, derived from the extensive, omnibus-character of the underlying psycholexical approach, and based on two characteristics, namely its exhaustiveness in capturing [Page 139]the semantics of personality and its recourse to ordinary language. Though both these characteristics may be improved upon, in comparison to other approaches to personality, the psycholexical approach outranks semantic coverage, and it has optimized the level of communication on personality traits by faring merely on readily intelligible units of description.

The model has served as a basis for the development of assessment instruments of various kinds. In the following paragraphs, different assessment forms based on the Big Five model, as well as some representative assessment systems, are briefly described, including Big Five trait-markers, Big Five inventories, and some instruments that have been moulded after the Big Five framework. To begin with, a brief content description of the Big Five constructs is given.

The Big Five Constructs

The Big Five constructs, Extraversion, Agreeable-ness, Conscientiousness, Emotional Stability, and Intellect/Autonomy, made a long journey, covering about a whole century, towards a strong performance in the psychological arena during the last decade of the twentieth century. A straight count of the references made to each of the presently identified Big Five constructs in abstracts since 1887 tells that, of the total number of 17,262 references made, Extraversion (and Introversion) and Neuroticism (and Emotional Stability) are the absolute winners, with 8574 and 6189 references respectively. This picture sustains the historical ‘Big Two’ of temperament (Wiggins, 1968). The historical third, Intellect, with 1534 references, may refer to both traits and abilities.