Mini-IPIP five-factor model personality scale

The Mini-IPIP (Donnellan, Oswald, Baird, & Lucas, 2006) is the 20-item short form of Goldberg's public-domain Big Five item pool: four items per dimension covering Extraversion, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, Neuroticism, and Openness to Experience. Its authors' aim, per the source title, was a tiny-yet-effective measure of the Big Five.

Because the items are public domain, this platform administers the exact published item set and reports each dimension against the Eugene–Springfield Community Sample reference values shown in the norms section.

The notes below are reproduced from the platform's psychometrics register for this instrument — the same source-cited reliability, validity, and norms text that accompanies its downloadable report.

Donnellan et al. (2006) report Cronbach's alphas of .72-.82 for the five 4-item domain scales. Reliabilities computed from the Eugene-Springfield Community Sample on these exact items: O alpha = 0.72, C alpha = 0.71, E alpha = 0.79, A alpha = 0.64, N alpha = 0.77.

The Mini-IPIP reproduces the Big Five factor structure and shows good convergent and discriminant validity with the NEO-PI-R and IPIP-NEO despite its brevity. It predicts job performance, academic achievement, and well-being outcomes comparably to longer Big Five inventories (Donnellan et al., 2006).

Population percentiles are derived from the English-language Eugene-Springfield Community Sample (ESCS; Goldberg, Harvard Dataverse doi:10.7910/DVN/UF52WY). Means and SDs computed from complete-case IPIP responses matching these exact items and reverse-keys. The ESCS is an adult community panel and is not nationally representative.

“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.

Item responses are summed within each scale (reverse-keyed items recoded first) and expressed as a population percentile against the cited reference sample, with a reliability-based confidence range where α is published.

Norms computed from the Eugene-Springfield Community Sample (ESCS) — Lewis R. Goldberg’s adult community panel from Eugene and Springfield, Oregon (Harvard Dataverse, doi:10.7910/DVN/UF52WY). This is a community sample and is NOT nationally representative. The mean, standard deviation, reference N and Cronbach’s α were computed directly from the raw IPIP item-level responses on THIS scale’s exact item set and reverse-keying (complete cases); reference N varies by scale and is shown with each scale below. The confidence range uses the standard error of measurement (SEM = SD·√(1−α)) from that computed α.

Donnellan, M. B., Oswald, F. L., Baird, B. M., & Lucas, R. E. (2006). The Mini-IPIP Scales. Psychological Assessment, 18(2), 192–203.