306 III. DEvELOPMENT
dren. Hence, this approach formed a strong 
cross-  cultural test for the validity of the Big 
Five framework applied to children of dif -
ferent ages.
For the construction of the HiPIC, the 
content of the free description database 
was represented in large item sets for ages 
6, 9, and 12, respectively, presented to large 
samples of parents and teachers to rate chil -
dren. Relying on these ratings, items were 
grouped into homogeneous item clusters and 
subsequently subjected to structural analy -
ses. Given the large similarities across ages, 
one common inventory was proposed show -
ing a clear five-  factor structure, with higher- 
order factors labeled as emotional stability, 
extraversion, imagination, benevolence and 
conscientiousness (De Fruyt, Mervielde, & 
De Clercq, 2007). Four of these directly 
translate into the Big Five, with imagina -
tion covering fantasy, creativity, and intel -
lect, whereas the benevolence factor has a 
much broader nature than the agreeableness 
factor in traditional Big Five/FFM research, 
also including facets such as dominance  and 
irritability,  in addition to altruism, ego -
centrism,  and compliance.  In other words, 
benevolence reflects more the “easy versus 
difficult-  to- handle” construct, prominent 
in the temperament literature (Thomas & 
Chess, 1977), potentially also reflecting a 
“manageability” bias due to working with 
parents or teachers as prime informants. 
Similar structural analyses were conducted, 
with the American free description material 
also resulting in a clear five-  factor structure, 
with factors given labels similar to those 
in the FFM for adults. Together, these two 
free- description lines of research provided 
clear support for the structural validity of 
the Big Five model, supporting findings from 
previous top-down work. This, the observed 
structure was not a function of the item set 
that was provided by researchers but could 
be clearly retrieved from the active personal -
ity descriptive language that caregivers use 
to denote differences in their offspring.
An additional advantage of the free- 
description approach is that it also provided 
the opportunity to empirically derive a facet 
structure from the specific personality de -
scriptive content. The issue on the optimal 
number and nature of facets structured 
under the Big Five higher-  order factors was 
not adequately addressed at that time, and is currently still under debate in the per -
sonality description of adults (DeYoung, 
Quilty, & Peterson, 2007; Soto & John, 
2017). Mervielde and colleagues (Mervielde 
& De Fruyt, 1999; Mervielde et al., 2009) 
proposed 18 lower-order traits in the HiPIC 
that are listed in column 1 of Table 13.1. The 
facets proposed in the ICID are listed in col -
umn 2. It is clear that the active personal -
ity descriptors in the two language groups 
translate into a common set of facets (e.g., 
HiPIC: Anxiety matching ICID: Fearful/ 
insecure; HiPIC: Energy with ICID: Activity 
level; HiPIC: Intellect with ICID: Intellect; 
HiPIC: Compliance with ICID: Antago -
nism; and HiPIC Concentration with ICID: 
Distractibility), with subtle differences, re -
flected in different facet labels or extra fac -
ets (e.g., ICID distinguishes a negative emo -
tionality facet from Fearful/insecure and 
shy; whereas the HiPIC has only two neu -
roticism facets: anxiety and self-  confidence). 
These divergences may reflect sampling dif -
ferences, cultural differences, or rater biases. 
Tackett, Kushner, De Fruyt, and Mervielde 
(2013) empirically examined convergence 
between the HiPIC and the short version 
of the ICID (Deal, Halverson, Martin, Vic -
tor, & Baker, 2007), further examining 
their validity to predict internalizing and 
externalizing psychopathology syndromes. 
Since its inception, the HiPIC has been 
translated into different languages, includ -
ing Australian English (Watt, Hopkinson, 
Costello, & Roodenburg, 2017), Brazilian 
Portuguese, Estonian (Laidra, De Fruyt, & 
Konstabel, 2017), French (Bouvard, Denis, 
& Roulin, 2015), German (Bleidorn & Os -
tendorf, 2009), Italian (Di Blas, d’Orlando, 
& Pruneddu, 2014), Japanese, Korean, Nor -
wegian (Vollrath, Hampson, & Torgersen, 
2016), Romanian (Iliescu, Dimache, & 
 Zanfirescu, 2016), and U.S. English (Tack -
ett et al., 2013). Table 13.1 further includes 
a conceptual classification of the facet scales 
of the BFI-2 (Soto & John, 2017), matched 
to those of respectively the HiPIC and the 
ICID.
Person‑Centered  Research
The availability of well-  designed instru -
ments to assess personality traits in adoles -
cence has led to a flourishing line of research 
on how a particular trait develops and how it 