Temperament & Character Scales
Public-domain IPIP scales for temperament and character subconstructs. 30 scales, 284 items.
At a glance
Detailed write-up pending
A full, citation-backed scientific write-up for this scale — overview, clinical use, and psychometrics in the voice of a dissertation "Measures" section — has not yet been authored. To honor the platform's no-fabricated-sources rule, this page currently shows only the verified registry facts above (item count, structure, scoring, and any published norms). No validity coefficients, reliability figures, or citations are shown here that cannot be traced to a named source; the authored write-up will be added once its sources have been read and recorded in the plan-integrity file.
Subscales
Competence 9 items
Compassion 10 items
Tolerance 12 items
Industriousness 10 items
Trust 12 items
Morality 10 items
Social Discomfort 10 items
Optimism 10 items
Impulse Control 10 items
Low Self-Efficacy 9 items
Empathy 8 items
Sentimentality 10 items
Resourcefulness 10 items
Satisfaction 10 items
Friendliness 10 items
Romanticism 10 items
Neuroticism 10 items
Achievement-Striving 10 items
Imagination 10 items
Femininity 8 items
Self-Disclosure 10 items
Variety-Seeking 10 items
Self-Acceptance 8 items
Harm Avoidance 9 items
Conservatism 5 items
Dependence 10 items
Rebelliousness 10 items
Initiative 10 items
Recklessness 10 items
Extravagance 4 items
Example item
“Accept challenging tasks.”
Illustrative only. During administration items are presented one screen-set at a time; response-key direction is never shown to respondents.
Scoring & interpretation
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.
Psychometrics & norms
| Scale | M | SD | N | α | Metric |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Competence | 35.41 | 4.83 | 600 | 0.76 | summed raw |
| Compassion | 39.81 | 6.10 | 570 | 0.82 | summed raw |
| Industriousness | 39.82 | 5.26 | 570 | 0.77 | summed raw |
| Trust | 49.26 | 5.02 | 570 | 0.73 | summed raw |
| Morality | 43.00 | 4.14 | 645 | 0.64 | summed raw |
| Social Discomfort | 27.23 | 7.39 | 600 | 0.86 | summed raw |
| Optimism | 39.35 | 5.22 | 570 | 0.71 | summed raw |
| Low Self-Efficacy | 21.30 | 5.58 | 795 | 0.76 | summed raw |
| Empathy | 31.89 | 4.09 | 645 | 0.78 | summed raw |
| Sentimentality | 35.43 | 6.44 | 570 | 0.80 | summed raw |
| Resourcefulness | 38.74 | 5.95 | 795 | 0.82 | summed raw |
| Satisfaction | 38.42 | 5.45 | 647 | 0.69 | summed raw |
| Friendliness | 36.75 | 6.84 | 600 | 0.83 | summed raw |
| Romanticism | 33.22 | 5.73 | 570 | 0.65 | summed raw |
| Neuroticism | 22.71 | 7.07 | 570 | 0.85 | summed raw |
| Achievement-Striving | 32.20 | 6.22 | 600 | 0.77 | summed raw |
| Imagination | 32.89 | 6.06 | 570 | 0.74 | summed raw |
| Femininity | 29.90 | 4.39 | 570 | 0.66 | summed raw |
| Self-Disclosure | 32.04 | 7.61 | 600 | 0.85 | summed raw |
| Variety-Seeking | 35.49 | 5.89 | 600 | 0.80 | summed raw |
| Self-Acceptance | 31.01 | 4.49 | 570 | 0.68 | summed raw |
| Conservatism | 15.94 | 5.15 | 673 | 0.77 | summed raw |
| Dependence | 34.91 | 4.70 | 646 | 0.66 | summed raw |
| Rebelliousness | 21.47 | 6.39 | 570 | 0.80 | summed raw |
| Initiative | 35.32 | 6.96 | 645 | 0.85 | summed raw |
| Recklessness | 23.21 | 5.15 | 645 | 0.72 | summed raw |
| Extravagance | 8.06 | 4.04 | 626 | 0.85 | summed raw |
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.
Source & citation
Public-domain items from the International Personality Item Pool (Goldberg, L. R., 1999; ipip.ori.org). Scale membership and reverse-keying taken verbatim from Goldberg's IPIP multi-scale map (ScalesFor967items). Construct names from ipip.ori.org.