International Personality Item Pool Representation of the NEO Personality Inventory, 120 items (IPIP-NEO-120)

Two people with the same Extraversion score may differ in which part of Extraversion they show: one seeks crowds and excitement, another is simply cheerful and energetic. The IPIP-NEO-120 describes personality at two levels. The five domains are Neuroticism, Extraversion, Openness to Experience, Agreeableness and Conscientiousness, and each divides into six facets: Anxiety, Anger, Depression, Self-Consciousness, Immoderation and Vulnerability within Neuroticism; Friendliness, Gregariousness, Assertiveness, Activity Level, Excitement-Seeking and Cheerfulness within Extraversion; Imagination, Artistic Interests, Emotionality, Adventurousness, Intellect and Liberalism within Openness; Trust, Morality, Altruism, Cooperation, Modesty and Sympathy within Agreeableness; and Self-Efficacy, Orderliness, Dutifulness, Achievement-Striving, Self-Discipline and Cautiousness within Conscientiousness.

The thirty-facet structure follows the Revised NEO Personality Inventory of Costa and McCrae (1992), the most widely used research model of the five domains. Goldberg (1999) built parallel scales from public-domain items in the International Personality Item Pool (IPIP), and Johnson (2014) selected four items per facet to create this 120-item form, which preserves the facet structure at a practical length.

Each facet is scored from four items and each domain from its six facets. Higher scores describe a stronger, more consistent version of a tendency; lower scores describe the opposite pole, which is a different style rather than a shortfall. The report shows the domains first and then the facets within each, so that it is clear whether a domain score rests evenly on its facets or is driven by one or two of them.

The inventory is used in personality research, in counseling and coaching, and in clinical settings where a detailed description of normal-range personality is useful. On this site, the IPIP-NEO-60 is a shorter version of the same structure, the Mini-IPIP gives the five domains only, the Big Five Aspect Scales (BFAS) describe an intermediate level of two aspects per domain, and the IPIP-HEXACO organizes personality around six dimensions.

The thirty-facet architecture comes from Costa and McCrae's Revised NEO Personality Inventory (NEO PI-R; Costa & McCrae, 1992), which consolidated the five-factor model into a working hierarchy: five domains — Neuroticism, Extraversion, Openness, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness — each articulated into six facets. Its authority rested on a sustained validation program showing the five factors converge across instruments and across self- and observer-ratings (McCrae & Costa, 1987).

Kajonius and Johnson (2019) subsequently examined its five-factor structure in a public dataset of more than 320,000 respondents.

As with all IPIP inventories, the items are free to administer verbatim, which keeps this profile fully reproducible.

The IPIP-NEO-120 facet scales show good convergent validity with the corresponding NEO PI-R facets (mean r ≈ .73) and the factor structure replicates the five-domain model. Facets predict external criteria (e.g., N facets predicting anxiety disorders, C facets predicting academic performance) comparably to proprietary measures (Johnson, 2014).

“Worry about things.”

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.