Six-Factor Personality Scales

Twenty-four facets describe personality in six broad groups: Extraversion (Affiliation, Dominance, Exhibition), Agreeableness (Abasement, Even-tempered, Good-natured), Independence (Autonomy, Individualism, Self-Reliance), Openness to Experience (Change, Understanding, Breadth of Interest), Methodicalness (Cognitive Structure, Deliberateness, Order) and Industriousness (Achievement, Endurance, Seriousness). Statements describe each in everyday terms, such as preferring to plan ahead or working long hours without tiring.

Jackson, Paunonen and Tremblay (2000) developed the Six Factor Personality Questionnaire, dividing Conscientiousness into Methodicalness and Industriousness and adding Independence as a separate dimension. The facets draw on the needs described by Murray (1938), which Jackson had earlier measured in his Personality Research Form. Goldberg (1999) wrote parallel scales for the public-domain International Personality Item Pool (IPIP).

Each facet and factor is scored separately. Higher scores describe a stronger version of the tendency; lower scores describe its opposite. The separation of Methodicalness from Industriousness means that a person who works hard but dislikes structure, or who is orderly but not driven, can be described accurately.

The scales are used in research and in occupational and personal assessment. On this site, the Achievement and Interpersonal Trait Scales follow a related model by the same author, the Big Five Aspect Scales (BFAS) also divide Conscientiousness in two, and the Need for Order and Cleanliness scale describes one facet in more depth.

Many of the subscale names read straight out of Henry A. Murray's catalogue of psychogenic needs — Affiliation, Dominance, Exhibition, Endurance, Autonomy, Abasement, Understanding — the conceptual vocabulary of Explorations in Personality (Murray, 1938), carried into questionnaire form by Douglas Jackson's construct-driven program of test development.

Jackson and colleagues argued from factor-analytic evidence that five factors under-describe personality, proposing six recurrent dimensions instead (Jackson, Paunonen, Fraboni, & Goffin, 1996); the 6FPQ (Jackson, Paunonen, & Tremblay, 2000) fixed that six-factor architecture in a purpose-built instrument. The collection is thus a bridge between the needs psychology of the 1930s and the modern factor-model debate.

The subscales here are original public-domain IPIP items keyed to constructs similar to the 6FPQ's scales; scores here are not scores on the Six Factor Personality Questionnaire itself, and its published evidence does not transfer to this form. Scale membership and reverse-keying follow Goldberg's IPIP multi-scale map (ScalesFor967items) verbatim, with construct names as catalogued at ipip.ori.org.

These scales follow a six-factor view of personality that separates Conscientiousness into methodical order and achievement striving, along with Extraversion, Agreeableness, Openness to Experience, Independence and Emotional Stability (Jackson et al., 1996).

Analyses of needs-based personality scales found that the six-factor solution fit better than five factors because achievement and methodicalness split apart (Jackson et al., 1996). The public-domain items converge with the commercial scales they parallel (Goldberg et al., 2006).

“Accept people as they are.”

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.