USE OF THE TRANSPARENT BIPOLAR INVENTORY TO MEASURE THE BIG-5 PERSONALITY-FACTORS IN AN EPIDEMIOLOGIC SURVEY OF THE ELDERLY

Goldberg (1992) developed the Transparent Bipolar Inventory (TBI) as a set of simple factor markers for the big-five personality traits. In the present study, the TBI was completed by 534 elderly persons partic ipating in the second wave of a longitudinal epidemiological study. Co nfirmatory factor analysis of the TBI items showed that the five-facto r model provided an acceptable, but not impressive, fit to the data. I n contrast to Goldberg's analyses with university students, the factor s in this sample were substantially correlated. The fitting of a model to account for between-factor correlations demonstrated the existence of an important general factor underlying responses to nearly all the TBI items. This general factor may represent an artefact of scale usa ge. While our results provide some support for Goldberg's five-factor structure, it would be premature to promote the TBI scales as markers of major personality dimensions. Copyright (C) 1996 Elsevier Science L td.