Big-Five Factor Markers

Fifty statements describe five broad tendencies: Extraversion (talkativeness, sociability, comfort around people), Agreeableness (sympathy, interest in others, kindness), Conscientiousness (preparation, attention to detail, following a schedule), Emotional Stability (calm, relaxation, freedom from worry and mood swings) and Intellect or Imagination (a rich vocabulary, vivid imagination, quickness in understanding). Ten statements represent each, half worded in each direction.

Goldberg (1992) developed sets of adjective markers for the five factors from his lexical research on the words people use to describe personality. When he founded the public-domain International Personality Item Pool (IPIP; Goldberg, 1999), he wrote short statement versions of these markers so that researchers could measure the five factors freely. The fifty-item set has since become one of the most widely used public-domain personality measures.

Each factor is scored from its ten statements. Higher scores describe a stronger, more consistent version of the tendency; lower scores describe its opposite pole. Note that the scales are keyed toward Emotional Stability rather than Neuroticism, so a high score on that scale describes steadiness, and that the fifth factor is named Intellect, emphasizing interest in ideas over the aesthetic side of openness.

The markers are used in research, teaching and personal development as a standard measure of the five factors. On this site, the Mini-IPIP is a twenty-item short form drawn from them, the Big-Five Factor Markers (100) is a longer version, the Big Five Aspect Scales (BFAS) divide each factor into two aspects, and the IPIP-NEO-120 scores thirty facets.

Goldberg (1992) reported that carefully selected marker sets produced clear five-factor solutions with high within-factor coherence in self- and peer data.

Convergently, they relate to other Big Five instruments in the lexical/questionnaire tradition (including NEO comparisons in that report). Discriminantly, the five-factor solution separates Emotional Stability from the other domains rather than collapsing into a general evaluative factor when markers are well chosen (Goldberg, 1992). Predictive/criterion applications in later marker work commonly use these domains as baselines for life outcomes. This page’s IPIP form is not the original 100 unipolar adjectives.

This version uses public-domain items from the International Personality Item Pool (Goldberg et al., 2006) keyed to the same dimensions.

“Am the life of the party.”

Illustrative only. During administration items are presented one screen-set at a time; response-key direction is never shown to respondents.

Your report explains each of your scale scores in plain language.