52 I. THEORETICAL  PERSPECTI vES AND  CONCEPT uAL uNITS
The BFI does not use single adjectives as 
items, because such items are answered less 
consistently than when they are accompa -
nied by definitions or elaborations (Gold -
berg & Kilkowski, 1985). Instead, the BFI 
uses short phrases based on the trait adjec -
tives known to be prototypical markers of 
the Big Five (John, 1989, 1990). One or 
two prototypical trait adjectives served as 
the item core to which elaborative, clarify -
ing, or contextual information was added. 
For example, the Openness adjective origi -
nal became the BFI item “Is original, comes 
up with new ideas” and the Conscientious -
ness adjective persevering  served as the basis 
for the item “Perseveres until the task is 
finished.” Thus, the BFI items (see Appen -
dix 2.1) retain the advantages of adjectival 
items (brevity and simplicity) while avoiding 
some of their pitfalls (ambiguous or multiple 
meanings and salient desirability). Indeed, 
DeYoung (2006, p. 1140) hypothesized that 
with their more contextualized trait content 
the BFI items should elicit higher interrater 
agreement than single-  adjective items, and 
found that pairwise interrater agreement 
was indeed somewhat higher for the BFI.
Although the BFI scales include only eight 
to 10 items, they do not sacrifice either con -
tent coverage or good psychometric proper -
ties. In U.S. and Canadian samples, the alpha 
reliabilities of the BFI scales range from .75 
to .90 and average above .80. Three-month 
test– retest reliabilities range from .80 to 
.90, with a mean of .85 (Rammstedt & 
John, 2005, 2007). In a middle-  aged sam -
ple, Hampson and Goldberg (2006) found a 
mean test–  retest stability of .74, with stabil -
ity correlations of .79 for Extraversion and 
Openness and about .70 for Agreeableness, 
Conscientiousness, and Neuroticism. Va -
lidity evidence includes substantial conver -
gent and divergent relations with other Big 
Five instruments, as well as with peer rat -
ings (Rammstedt & John, 2005, 2007). De -
Young (2006) analyzed a large community 
dataset with BFI self-  reports and BFI rat -
ings by three peers; We therefore reanalyzed 
these data and found validity correlations of 
.67 for Extraversion, .60 for Openness, .52 
for Neuroticism, .48 for Agreeableness, and 
.47 for Conscientiousness, averaging .55. 
The size of these convergent correlations is 
even more impressive given that the (abso -lute) heterotrait–  heteromethod discriminant 
correlations averaged .09, and 19 of the 20 
correlations were below .20, with only one 
reaching –.21 (indicating that individuals 
who described themselves as high in Neu -
roticism were rated by their peers as slightly 
more disagreeable).
Measurement: Comparing Major Big 
Five Instruments
So far, we have discussed Goldberg’s (1992) 
TDA, Costa and McCrae’s (1992) NEO 
questionnaires, and DeYoung et al.’s (2007) 
BFAS, and the BFI as well as its revised ver -
sion, the BFI-2 (Soto & John, 2017a). In ad -
dition, a variety of other measures are avail -
able to assess the Big Five in English. Most 
of them were developed for specific research 
applications. Digman (e.g., 1989) construct -
ed several different adjective sets to study 
teacher ratings of personality in children and 
adolescents, and Wiggins (1995) scales were 
described above. Big Five scales have also 
been constructed using items from exist -
ing instruments. For example, John, Caspi, 
Robins, Moffitt, and Stouthamer-  Loeber 
(1994) developed scales to measure the Big 
Five in adolescents using personality ratings 
on the California Child Q -Sort obtained 
from their mothers. Measelle, John, Ablow, 
Cowan, and Cowan (2005) developed scales 
to measure the Big Five with a puppet inter -
view in children ages 4–7. In their behavior 
genetic research, Loehlin, McCrae, Costa, 
and John (1998) used Big Five scales con -
structed from the ACL (Gough & Heilbrun, 
1983) and the CPI (Gough, 1987); for the 
latter, Soto and John (2009a) developed new 
domain and facet scales. As shown in Table 
2.1, another broad-band personality inven -
tory that provides scores for the Big Five 
is the Hogan Personality Inventory (HPI; 
Hogan, 1986; Hogan & Hogan, 2007). The 
availability of so many different instruments 
to measure the Big Five makes clear that 
there is no single instrument that represents 
the “gold standard.”
Comparing the NEO‑FFI, BFI‑2, and TDA
In general, the NEO questionnaires repre -
sent the best-  validated Big Five measures 