Selecting A Suitable Personality Measure
Selecting A Suitable Personality Measure
Selecting A Suitable Personality Measure
One strength of the Big Five is that the model has shown cross-cultural
consistency in studies in which measures based on the model, such as the NEO-PI-R,
have been developed within one culture and validated in other cultures. In addition,
research has generally supported the stability of the Big Five. One major criticism of
the model, however, is that it does not provide any theoretical explanations for
personality development; rather it is more of a description of personality traits
possessed by individuals (Carducci, 1998). The NEO-PI-R is the measure that is most
often used to measure personality according to the Big Five (De Raad & Perugini,
2002).
In contrast to the Big Five, which focuses on personality traits, the Myers-Briggs
Type Theory focuses on types, which are “a difference in kind”. Rather than focusing on
traits directly, this approach focuses on the patterns of traits that characterize whole
persons. By doing so MBTI acknowledges both qualitative and quantitative individual
differences rather than focusing only on quantitative differences. The concept of “type”
originated from Jung’s theory of psychological types, but was further developed in the
early 1940s by Briggs and Myers (Quenk, 2000). The main focus of the MBTI is to
measure individuals on four dimensions consisting of opposite pairs; Extraversion-
Introversion (E-I), Sensation- Intuition (S-N), Thinking-Feeling (T-F), and Judgment-
Perception (J-P), resulting in 16 possible psychological types.
Although numerous instruments have been developed to assess the Big Five
traits, the NEO-PI-R, is the most commonly used. The NEO-PI-R is a revised version of
the Neuroticism-Extraversion-Openness Personality Inventory (NEO-PI), which was
developed to measure three out of the five personality traits. The NEO-PI-R comprises
240 items and was primarily developed through factor analytical methods. Subscales for
each of the Big Five traits have been designed to measure six sub traits, which the
measure developers named facets. The NEO-PI-R contains both a self-report
questionnaire (S form) as well as an observer rating form (R form) for peers to complete,
allowing for the collection of dyadic data.
Conclusion
From the material presented, numerous similarities and differences can be noted
between the NEO-PI-R and MBTI. A major distinction between the measures is that the
NEO-PI-R assesses personality traits and the MBTI assesses types. The NEO-PI-R
assumes that there are five universal qualities, so called traits, and that individuals vary
in the degree to which they posses those traits. As a result the NEO-PI-R is focused on
measuring individual’s amount of each trait. MBTI on the other hand rather focuses on
different qualitative categories, so called types, where individuals prefer one category
over the other and where MBTI classifies people in to one of these categories (Quenk,
2000). Some observed similarities, are that both measures are limited to simply
describing personality and not actually explaining it, which has been criticized from
different sources (Carducci, 1998). Also both inventories have showed to be useful in
many and quite diverse areas (Costa, 1996; De Raad & Perugini, 2002; Wurster, 1993).