A Comparison of Big-Five structures of personality traits in Dutch, English, and German

We compare Big‐Five factor structures found in Dutch, American English, and German, and present a joint structure. The data consist of self‐ and peer ratings of 600 subjects with 551 Dutch trait‐descriptive adjectives, 636 subjects with 540 English adjectives, and 802 subjects with 430 German adjectives. On the basis of 126 common items, we assess the congruences between the factors as originally published, as resulting from target rotations, and from simultaneous rotations. With the exception of the Dutch Factor V, the Big‐Five factors recur across languages in a relative but not in a strict sense. Moreover, at a more detailed level differences in the positions of the axes are uncovered. By applying a split‐sample technique to the three data sets, we verify that these differences do not arise through unreliability. Also, few trait terms appear to have the same precise meaning across these three languages; such labels therefore cannot serve as anchor concepts for an international language of personality. © 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.