Assignment:
Designing a Scale for the Big Five Personality Traits
Objective: Understand the intricacies of scale design
by developing your own measures for the big five personality traits and
comparing them with an official test.
Instructions:
Understanding
the Big Five:
Familiarize
yourselves with the Big Five Personality Traits:
Openness
Conscientiousness
Extraversion
Agreeableness
Neuroticism
Defining
the Traits:
Find
five unique definitions for each of the five personality
traits from reputable sources. Remember to cite the source for each
definition as well (Name & Link).
Example:
[Source Name] defines Openness as “the extent to which a person is
imaginative or independent and depicts a personal preference for a
variety of experiences.”
Item
Development:
After
gathering personal and sourced definitions, identify common themes or
aspects for each trait.
Highlight
the common themes in the definitions using different colors.
Example:
For Openness, common themes might be “creativity” (yellow),
“curiosity” (green), and “adventure-seeking” (blue).
Develop
at least three statements based on these themes as shown in the example.
Example
for Openness:
“I
enjoy exploring new places and ideas.” (adventure-seeking)
“I
often seek out art or music that’s new to me.” (creativity)
“I’m
always curious about things I don’t know.” (curiosity)
Survey
Creation:
Design
a Google Forms survey incorporating the 15 items (3 for each trait)
you’ve developed.
Format
consistently using a 1-5 Likert scale for each item, where 1 = Strongly
Disagree and 5 = Strongly Agree.
Example:
For the statement “I enjoy exploring new places and ideas,” a
respondent could pick a number between 1 and 5 to indicate their
agreement level.
Taking
the Official Big Five Test:
Take
the official Big Five test individually and note your scores for each of
the five traits.
Big
Five test: https://www.truity.com/test/big-five-personality-test
Data
Analysis:
Calculate
the correlation between scores from your survey and the official Big Five
test scores. If you’re unfamiliar with correlation calculations, online
tools or software like Excel can assist.
A
positive correlation near 1 indicates that your scale aligns well with
the official measure, while a correlation near 0 suggests little
alignment.
Part 1
Openness Definition 1
Openness Definition 2
Openness Definition 3
Openness Definition 4
Openness Definition 5
Common Themes:
Conscientiousness
Definition 1
Conscientiousness Definition 2
Conscientiousness
Definition 3
Conscientiousness
Definition 4
Conscientiousness
Definition 5
Common Themes:
Extraversion
Definition 1
Extraversion
Definition 2
Extraversion
Definition 3
Extraversion
Definition 4
Extraversion
Definition 5
Common Themes:
Agreeableness
Definition 1
Agreeableness
Definition 2
Agreeableness
Definition 3
Agreeableness
Definition 4
Agreeableness
Definition 5
Common Themes:
Neuroticism
Definition 1
Neuroticism
Definition 2
Neuroticism
Definition 3
Neuroticism
Definition 4
Neuroticism
Definition 5
Common Themes:
Part 2
3 Likert scale items for each trait based on the
identified common themes:
Openness
1.
2.
3.
Conscientiousness
1.
2.
3.
Extraversion
1.
2.
3.
Agreeableness
1.
2.
3.
Neuroticism
1.
2.
3.
Part 3
Link to Google Form survey containing the above scales:
Part 4
Use the provided Excel Worksheet to calculate level of
correlation between your survey and the official test and report it below:
Level of Correlation:
Don’t forget to attach the Excel worksheet including the correlation results
page with the assignment.
