Validation of the French version of the 10-item Big Five Inventory

Our primary objective was to validate the French version of the BFI-10, an ultra-short ten-item version of the Big Five Inventory (BFI; John et al., 1991), which allows for a reasonably accurate assessment of personality in circumstances in which more in-depth assessment is not possible. In order to reach a thorough evaluation of the external validity, we also aimed to examine the bandwidth of the BFI-10 scales with reference to the study by De Young, Quilty and Peterson (2007) who distinguished between two aspects in each of the Big Five: Assertiveness and Enthusiasm for Extraversion; Compassion and Politeness for Agreeability; Orderliness and Productiveness for Conscientiousness; Withdrawal and Volatility for Negative Emotionality, and finally Openness to Aesthetics and Openness to Ideas for Open-Mindedness. Our concern with regard to bandwidth was to examine whether the BFI-10 scales have strong enough correlations with both aspects of each domain. Participants. Data from four samples were analysed: Sample 1 comprised 2499 undergraduate students (1654 women) who completed the full BFI in university classes; Sample 2 comprised 13,306 participants (8471 women) who filled out the BFI-10 ten items online via Internet; Sample 3 comprised 143 undergraduate students (115 women) who completed the full BFI twice with a two-week interval; Sample 4 comprised 360 undergraduate students (183 women) who filled out the BFI and NEO PI-R. The French version of the Big Five Inventory is a 45-item inventory, which measures the five broader domains of personality. The ultrashort Ten-item Big Five Inventory (BFI-10) was developed simultaneously in German and English by Rammstedt and John (2007); it comprises five two-item scales measuring the big five domains. The Neuroticism-Extraversion-Openness Personality Inventory Revised (NEO PI-R; Costa et McCrae, 1992) is a 240-item questionnaire which assesses the big five domains and 30 lower-order facets, i.e. six facets per domain. Factor structure and reliability of the five two-item scales were first investigated on samples 1 and 3. Confirmatory factor analyses (CFAs) were conducted on samples 1 and 2, and discriminant validity was assessed via comparison with the NEO PI-R (sample 4). In order to examine the bandwidth of the BFI-10 two-item scales, we studied their correlation not only with the NEO PI-R domains but also with the 30 facets. The CFAs showed the good fit of the five-factor structure, with RMSEA=.077 (.072), CFI=.