Revised NEO Personality Inventory
The Revised NEO Personality Inventory is a personality inventory that examines a person's Big Five personality traits. In addition, the NEO PI-R also reports on six subcategories of each Big Five personality trait.
Historically, development of the Revised NEO PI-R began in 1978 with the publication of a personality inventory by Costa and McCrae. These researchers published three updated versions of their personality inventory in 1985, 1992, and 2005 which are called the NEO PI, NEO PI-R, and NEO PI-3, respectively. The revised inventories feature updated norms.
The inventories have both longer and shorter versions with the full NEO PI-R consisting of 240 items and providing detailed facet scores, whereas the shorter NEO-FFI has only 60 items. The test was originally developed for use with adult men and women without overt psychopathology. It has also been found to be valid for use with children.
Personality dimensions
A table of the personality dimensions measured by the NEO PI-R, including facets, is as follows:| Neuroticism | Extraversion | Openness to experience | Agreeableness | Conscientiousness | |||
| Anxiety | Warmth/ Kindness | Fantasy/ Imagination/ | Trust / | Competence/ Self-efficacy/ | |||
| Hostility/ Anger/ | Gregariousness | Aesthetics/ Artistic Interest/ | Straightforwardness/ Morality/ | Order/ Lively Temperament | Actions/ Adventurousness/Exploration | Compliance/ Cooperation | Achievement Striving |
| Impulsiveness/ Immoderation | Excitement Seeking | Ideas/ Intellectual Interest/Curiosity | Modesty | Self-Discipline/ | |||
| Vulnerability to Stress/ Fear/Learned helplessness | Positive Emotion/ Cheerfulness/Vivacity | Values/ Psychological liberalism/Tolerance to ambiguity | Tendermindedness/ Sympathy | Deliberation/ Cautiousness |
History
In the 1970s, Paul Costa and Robert McCrae were researching age-related changes in personality. Costa and McCrae reported that they began by looking for the broad and agreed-upon traits of Neuroticism and Extraversion, but cluster analyses led them to a third broad trait, Openness to Experience. The original version of the inventory, which was published in 1978, included only those three factors. The inventory was then called the Neuroticism-Extraversion-Openness Inventory. This version would be included in the Augmented Baltimore Longitudinal Study of Aging.Based on data from the Baltimore study, Costa and McCrae recognized two additional factors: Agreeableness and Conscientiousness. Accordingly, in 1985 they published the first manual for the NEO that included all five factors, which are now known as the Big Five personality traits. Costa and McCrae renamed their instrument the NEO Personality Inventory. In this version, "NEO" was now considered part of the name of the test and was no longer an acronym. The assessment at this time included six facet sub-scales for the three original factors.
Research began to accumulate that the five factors were sufficiently broad and useful. There were also calls for a more detailed view of personality. In 1992 Costa and McCrae published the Revised NEO Personality Inventory which included six facets for each factor.
In the mid- to late-1990s, Costa and McCrae came to understand that some items on the NEO PI-R were outdated or too difficult for many test-takers to understand. Research also began to show that the NEO PI-R had the potential to be used with adolescents and children as young as 10. The possibility of using the NEO with young people led Costa and McCrae in 2002 to administer the NEO PI-R to over 1,900 high school students. The research identified 48 "problem" items that reflected either participant difficulties with item wording and/or low corrected item total correlations. Alternative items were developed to replace the "problem" items; the revised instrument was administered to new samples The NEO PI-R and a revised version of the instrument were administered to 500 adolescents, 635 adults, and 449 middle school age children. For both the adolescent and adult sample, the item/facet correlations were higher for the revised version of the NEO than for NEO PI-R. In addition, the internal consistency, factor structure, and tests of convergent and discriminant validity suggested that the revised version could be used with middle school children. Of the original 48 "problem" items, 37 were improved in terms of clarity and/or CITC. In 2005, Costa and McCrae published the latest version of the NEO Inventories, NEO PI-3. The new version included revisions of 37 items. With the creation of the NEO PI-3, Costa and McCrae intended to make the inventory accessible to a wider portion of the population. The improved readability of the NEO PI-3 compared to the NEO PI-R allowed the newer measure to be used with younger populations and adults with lower educational levels. Additionally, with the replacement of the 37 items, the psychometric properties of the NEO PI-3 were slightly improved over the NEO PI-R. In addition to increasing the readability of the NEO PI, the NEO PI-3 added a glossary of less familiar terms to aid in administration.
Forms and administration
In the most recent publication, there are two forms for the NEO, self-report and observer-report versions. Both forms consist of 240 items answered on a five-point Likert scale. Finally, there is a 60-item inventory, the NEO FFI. There are paper and computer versions of both forms.The manual reports that administration of the full version should take between 30 and 40 minutes. Costa and McCrae reported that an individual should not be evaluated if more than 40 items are missing. They also state that despite the fact that the assessment is "balanced" to control for the effects of acquiescence and nay-saying, that if more than 150 responses, or fewer than 50 responses, are "agree" or "strongly agree," the results should be interpreted with caution.
Scores can be reported to most test-takers on "Your NEO Summary," which provides a brief explanation of the assessment, and gives the individuals domain levels and a strengths-based description of three levels in each domain. For example, low N reads "Secure, hardy, and generally relaxed even under stressful conditions," whereas high N reads "Sensitive, emotional, and prone to experience feelings that are upsetting." For profile interpretation, facet and domain scores are reported in T scores and are recorded visually as compared to the appropriate norming group.
Reliability
The internal consistency of the NEO scales was assessed on 1,539 individuals. The internal consistency of the NEO PI-R was high, at: N =.92, E =.89, O =.87, A =.86, C =.90. The internal consistency of the facet scales ranged from.56 to.81. The internal consistency of the NEO PI-3 was consistent with that of the NEO PI-R, with α ranging from.89 to.93 for the five domains. Internal consistency coefficient from the facets, with each facet scale comprising fewer items than each of the Big Five scales, were necessarily smaller, ranging from.54 to.83.For the NEO FFI the internal consistencies reported in the manual were: N =.79, E =.79, O =.80, A =.75, C =.83. In the literature, the NEO FFI is used more often, with investigators using the NEO PI-R usually using the items from just the domains they are interested in. Sherry et al. found internal consistencies for the FFI to be as follows: N =.85, E =.80, O =.68, A =.75, C =.83.
The NEO has been translated into many languages. The internal consistency coefficients of the domain scores of a translation of the NEO that has been used in the Philippines are satisfactory. The alphas for the domain scores range from.78 to.90, with facet alphas having a median of.61. Observer-ratings NEO PI-R data from 49 different cultures was used as criterion in a recent study which tested whether individuals' perceptions of the "national character" of a culture accurately reflected the personality of the members of that culture.
The test-retest reliability of the NEO PI-R has also been found to be satisfactory. The test-retest reliability of an early version of the NEO after 3 months was: N =.87, E =.91, O =.86. The test-retest reliability for over 6 years, as reported in the NEO PI-R manual, was the following: N =.83, E =.82, O =.83, A =.63, C =.79. Costa and McCrae pointed out that these findings not only demonstrate good reliability of the domain scores, but also their stability. Scores measured six years apart varied only marginally more than scores measured a few months apart.
The psychometric properties of NEO PI-R scales have been found to generalize across ages, cultures, and methods of measurement.
Effect of age
Although individual differences tend to be relatively stable in adulthood, there are maturational changes in personality that are common to most people. Most cross-sectional and longitudinal studies suggest that neuroticism, extraversion, and openness tend to decline, whereas agreeableness and conscientiousness tend to increase during adulthood. A meta-analysis of 92 personality studies that used several different inventories found that social dominance, conscientiousness, and emotional stability increased with age, especially in the age span of 20 to 40.Validity
Costa and McCrae reported in the NEO manual research findings regarding the convergent and discriminant validity of the inventory. Examples of these findings include the following:- For the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, Introversion is correlated with the NEO facet Warmth at −0.61, and with the NEO facet Gregariousness at −0.59. Intuition is correlated with the NEO facet Fantasy at 0.43 and with the NEO facet Aesthetics at 0.56. Feeling is correlated with the NEO facet Tender-mindedness at 0.39.
- For the Self-Directed Search, Artistic is correlated with the NEO facet Aesthetic at 0.56, Investigative is correlated with the NEO facet Ideas at 0.43, and Social is correlated with the NEO facet Tender-mindedness at 0.36.
Adaptations in Other Languages
The NEO-PI-R has been extensively used across cultures. As per the information on the Psychological Assessment Resources website, the NEO-PI-R has been translated into 40 languages. These languages are Afrikaans, Albanian, Arabic, Bulgarian, Chinese, Croatian, Estonian, Farsi, Filipino, Finnish, Hebrew, Hindi, Hmong, Hungarian, Icelandic, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Kannada, Korean, Latvian, Lithuanian, Malay, Marathi, Peruvian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Slovene, Sotho, Spanish, Taiwanese, Thai, Tigrignan, Turkish, Urdu, Vietnamese, and Xhosa.Critiques
Critical reviews of the NEO PI-R were published in the 12th edition of the Mental Measurements Yearbook. The NEO-Pi-R has been severely criticized both in terms of its factor analytic/construct validity and its psychometric properties. Widiger criticized the NEO for not controlling for social desirability bias. He argued that test developers cannot assume participants will be honest, especially in settings where it benefits people to present themselves in a better light. Ben-Porath and Waller pointed out that the NEO Inventories could be improved with the addition of controls for dishonesty and social desirability.Juni, in another review of the NEO PI-R for the MMY, praised the NEO PI-R for including both self- and other-report scales, making it easier for psychologists to corroborate information provided by a client or research participant. However, Juni criticized the NEO PI-R for its conceptualization using the Five Factor Model of personality. Juni argued that the existence of the FFM was phenomenological and atheoretical, the model gaining popularity as a result of the influence of the authors in the psychological community. The NEO PI-R has also been criticized because of its market-oriented, proprietary nature. In response to the expense involved in using proprietary personality inventories such as the NEO, other researchers have contributed to the development of the International Personality Item Pool ; IPIP items and scales are available free of charge.
Alternative versions
A shortened version of NEO PI-R has been published. The shortened version is the NEO Five-Factor Inventory. It comprises 60 items and is designed to take 10 to 15 minutes to complete; by contrast, the NEO PI-R takes 45 to 60 minutes to complete. The NEO-FFI was revised in 2004. With the publication of the NEO PI-3 in 2005, a revised version of the NEO-FFI was also published. The revision of the NEO-FFI involved the replacement of 15 of the 60 items. The revised edition is thought to be more suitable for younger individuals. The new version had a stronger factor structure and increased reliability.Public domain inventories that correlate well with NEO PI-R have been published using items from the International Personality Item Pool and are collectively known as the "IPIP-NEO". Lewis Goldberg published a 300-question version of the 30-facet scale in 1999. John Johnson and Maples et al. have developed a few 120-question versions based on IPIP questions.
Very short IPIP-based analogues to the NEO PI-R scales are also part of the Analog for Multiple Broadband Inventories, an inventory designed to approximate a large number of different personality scales with a minimal number of items.
Cross-cultural research
Evidence of the NEO scales' stability in different countries and cultures can be considered evidence of its validity. A great deal of cross-cultural research has been carried out on the Five-Factor Model of Personality. Much of the research has relied on the NEO PI-R and the shorter NEO-FFI. McCrae and Allik edited a book consisting of papers bearing on cross-cultural research on the FFM. Research from China, Estonia, Finland, the Philippines, France, German-speaking countries, India, Portugal, Russia, South Korean, Turkey, Vietnam, and Zimbabwe have shown the FFM to be robust across cultures.Rolland, on the basis of the data from a number of countries, asserted that the neuroticism, openness, and conscientiousness dimensions are cross-culturally valid. Rolland further advanced the view that the extraversion and agreeableness dimensions are more sensitive to cultural context. Age differences in the five-factors of personality across the adult life span are parallel in samples from Germany, Italy, Portugal, Croatia, and South Korea. Data examined from many different countries have shown that the age and gender differences in those countries resembled differences found in U.S. samples. An intercultural factor analysis yielded a close approximation to the five-factor model.
McCrae, Terracciano et al. further reported data from 51 cultures. Their study found a cross-cultural equivalency between NEO PI-R five factors and facets.
With the recent development of the NEO PI-3, cross-cultural research will likely begin to compare the newer version with the NEO PI-R. Piedmont and Braganza compared the NEO PI-R to the NEO PI-3 using an adult sample from India. They used an English version of the NEO PI-3 in order to measure its utility in individuals who speak English as a second language. Piedmont and Braganza found that the NEO PI-3 had slightly higher item/total correlations and better test-retest reliability than the NEO PI-R. They suggested that the NEO PI-3 has the potential to be utilized with those who do not speak English as their first language.
Brain and genetics
The NEO PI-R has been used in research pertaining to both genotype and personality and brain and personality. Such studies, however, have not always been conclusive. For example, one study found some evidence for an association between NEO PI-R facets and polymorphism in the tyrosine hydroxylase gene, while another study could not confirm the finding.In a study published in Science, Lesch et al. found a relationship between the serotonin transporter gene regulatory region and the neuroticism subscale. Individuals with a shorter allele had higher neuroticism scores than individuals with the longer allele. The effect was significant for heterozygotes and even stronger for people homozygous for the shorter allele. Although the finding is important, this specific gene contributes to only 4% of the phenotypic variation in neuroticism. The authors concluded that "if other genes were hypothesized to contribute similar gene dosage effects to anxiety, approximately 10 to 15 genes might be predicted to be involved."