Measuring Construct Validity

Of The Big Five Inventory

Among Indonesian Military

Danu Dwi Atmoko

Indonesian Air Force
Psychology Departement
Quick Overview

 Background : development of research on Big

Five personality inventory.
◦ a. What is BFI ?
◦ b. Why BFI instrument?
◦ c. Cultural bias in adapted personality instrument.
 Testing validity of the BFI.
◦ Full model approach
◦ Singel factor / unidimensioal model approach
 Conclusions
 Development of research on Big Five
Inventory personality instrument

 Big Five Inventory was developed by John, Donahue,

and Kentle (1991), its reveals five personality
dimensions: Extraversion, Agreeableness,
Conscientiousness, Neuroticism, Openness (John &
Srivastava, 1999).

 Since then, research on the Big Five Personality/ Five

Factor Model Approach was progressing rapidly.
 SCIENTIFIC JOURNALS
BIG FIVE PERSONALITY
1800
1600
1400
1200
1000
800
600
400
200
0
1990-1994 1995-1999 2000-2004 2005-2009

Source : John, et al, (2008)

Why Choose BFI than Others

• The BFI's extensive application makes this personality

measurement instrument widely used. This instrument
also translated and adapted in various languages.
• BFI was translated in Chinese, Dutch, Jewish, Italian,
Swedish, Portuguese, Spanish, German (BFI-10), and
Lithuanian. (Berkeley Personality Lab, 2010)
• BFI has been translated into 28 languages and given to
17,837 individuals from 56 countries around the world.
(Schmitt's, et al , 2007)
Cultural bias in adapted personality
instrument.
◦ Researchers criticize the use of personality instrument
adapted from outside cultures considered vulnerable
to cultural bias (Bond & Yang, 1982; Paddila & Borsato,
2008)
◦ Paddila and Borsato (2008) suggest a construct bias in
cross-cultural research. A construct bias occurs when
a construct to be measured on a scale does not have
the same meaning among cultural groups.
◦ Then, Is BFI valid used in Indonesia ?
Testing Validity of BFI

 Participants: 605 Air Force Military members.

584 Men and 21 Women.
 Measure: all participants filled Indonesian
Version of BFI adapted by Soetjipto et al., 2010.
 The original version consist of 44 item short
phrase by John et., al 1999
 Researcher conduct Confirmatory Factor
Analysis to test validity of BFI.
 CFA RESULT

 Full model / multidimensional analysis : Chi-

square = 2946.99, df = 892, p value = 0.00, and
RMSEA = 0.062. The other fit indices results GFI
= 0.80, CFI = 0.91, and SRMR = 0.085.

 That means the model has poor goodness of fit.

 As a solution, researcher conduct single factor
/ unidimensional analysis.
 0.87 A2

0.85 A7

0.79 A 12

0.74 A 17

0.96 A 22

0.84 A 27

0.85

0.72

0.79

0.71
A 32

A 37

A 42

C3
CFA Full Model
0.73 C8

0.65

0.84

0.68

0.64
C13

C18

C23

C28
0.37
0.38
0.46
0.51
0.53
0.21
0.52
0.41
0.59
Analysis
0.71 C33 0.39
0.40
0.52
0.56
OPENNES 1.00
0.71 C38 0.46
0.60
0.54 0.87
0.68 C43 0.54
0.57
0.93 E1
CONSCI 1.00 0.47
0.34 E6
0.27 0.480.61
0.83 E11 0.81
0.41
0.93 E16 0.26 EXTRA 1.00 0.89
-0.82
0.81
0.34 E21 0.29
0.40 0.36
-0.92
0.92 E26 0.28
0.84 E31
AGREE 1.00 -0.56

0.92 E36
0.68
0.43 -0.81
0.87 N4
0.68
0.50
0.35
0.66
0.61
NEURO 1.00
0.63 N9
0.38
0.34
0.88 N14
-0.22
0.39
-0.16
0.58
0.84 N19
0.25
0.50
0.31
0.56
0.67 N24 0.59

0.75 N29

0.69 N34

0.65 N39

0.54 O5

0.82 O10

0.54 O15

0.75 O20

0.56 O25

0.85 O30

0.95 O35

0.97 O40

0.94 O41

0.90 O44

Chi-Square=2946.99, df=892, P-value=0.00000, RMSEA=0.062

Single Factor Model Results #1

Dimension/Factor N item (χ2) (df) p-value RMSEA GFI CFI SRMR

Openness 10 55.46 35 0.01 0.03 0.98 0.98 0.04

Conscientiousness 9 70.21 27 0.00 0.05 0.97 0.98 0.04
Extraversion 8 130.82 20 0.00 0.09 0.94 0.88 0.07
Agreeableness 9 91.23 27 0.00 0.06 0.96 0.91 0.05
Neuroticism 8 94.22 20 0.00 0.08 0.96 0.93 0.05

All factor have poor goodness of fit, especially in p-value & RMSEA.
Researcher forming a new model for each dimension/factor. See Result #2
Single Factor Model Results #2

Dimension/Factor N item (χ2) (df) p-value RMSEA GFI CFI SRMR

Openness 9 25.35 27 0.06 0.00 0.99 0.99 0.03

Conscientiousness 7 20.49 14 0.11 0.03 0.99 0.99 0.03
Extraversion 5 8.00 5 0.17 0.03 0.99 0.99 0.02
Agreeableness 5 8.91 5 0.11 0.04 0.99 0.98 0.02
Neuroticism 6 13.55 9 0.13 0.03 0.99 0.99 0.03

All factor have better goodness of fit than before, especially in p-value &
RMSEA. That means the new model was accepted.
Conclusion

 CFAs in full model analysis BFI result poor parameter of

fit indices.That means, this study proved that 44 items of
big five inventory weren’t support the five factor
personality theory in Indonesia.
 This finding support with the study of Ashton et al (2004)
which concluded that Five Factor Personality limited its
use in western countries. Other studies have even found
that there are six personality factors found (Mastuti,
2005).
 CFA need to be done in recent BFI-2, the newest version
of BFI (Soto & John, 2017).
Thank You