Ten Item Personality Measure (TIPI)

A comprehensive psychometric guide to the Ten Item Personality Measure (TIPI), examining its theoretical foundations, validity, reliability, scoring protocols, and authentic items.

Dr. Mohammed Looti An academic and researcher specialized in
PUBLISHED
Scientifically Reviewed · Dr. Marwa Abd-Alazim · September 25, 2026
Medically & Scientifically Reviewed Verified: September 25, 2026
Dr. Marwa Abd-Alazim PhD in Psychology
Faculty Member • University of Kerbala
Review Criteria & Clinical Standards

This content undergoes rigorous scientific peer-review and medical editorial standards at Arab Psychology Network to ensure clinical accuracy, validity, and compliance with evidence-based guidelines from leading psychological and healthcare authorities (APA / WHO).

1. Abstract

The Ten Item Personality Measure (TIPI) is a widely utilized, ultra-brief psychometric assessment designed to measure the Big Five personality dimensions: Extraversion, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, Emotional Stability (the low neuroticism pole), and Openness to Experience. Developed by Samuel D. Gosling, Peter J. Rentfrow, and William B. Swann, Jr. in 2003, the instrument was engineered specifically for research environments characterized by severe time constraints, high respondent burden, or extensive multidisciplinary survey batteries where standard, lengthy inventories such as the 240-item NEO Personality Inventory-Revised (NEO-PI-R) or the 44-item Big Five Inventory (BFI) are practically unfeasible.

The scale consists of ten item stems, each configured as a pair of descriptors (e.g., “Extraverted, enthusiastic” or “Critical, quarrelsome”), rated on a 7-point Likert scale ranging from 1 (“Disagree strongly”) to 7 (“Agree strongly”). Each of the five broad domains is assessed by precisely two items: one keyed in the positive direction and one keyed in the reverse direction. From a classical test theory perspective, the scale deliberately sacrifices high internal consistency (Cronbach's alpha) to maximize content validity and breadth of coverage across heterogeneous facets, avoiding the redundancy and artificial inflation of reliability common in brief scales that measure narrow sub-facets.

Despite its brevity, the TIPI demonstrates robust test-retest reliability ($r_{tt} \approx .72$ over a six-week interval), solid convergent validity with well-established benchmark instruments ($r = .65$ to $.87$ against the BFI and NEO-PI-R), substantial self-observer agreement, and external validity patterns virtually indistinguishable from longer measures across clinical, behavioral, cognitive, and demographic variables. Translated into more than thirty languages, the TIPI serves as a gold standard in brief personality measurement across social psychology, behavioral economics, digital phenotyping, and large-scale epidemiological monitoring.

2. Keywords

Ten Item Personality Measure, TIPI, Big Five personality traits, Five-Factor Model, brief personality assessment, Extraversion, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, Emotional Stability, Openness to Experience, psychometrics, content validity, short-form inventory.

3. Authors

The Ten Item Personality Measure was developed and validated by a team of personality and social psychologists affiliated with the Department of Psychology at the University of Texas at Austin:

  • Samuel D. Gosling, Ph.D.: Professor of Psychology at the University of Texas at Austin and a leading expert in personality assessment, interpersonal perception, nonverbal communication, and social environments.
  • Peter J. Rentfrow, Ph.D.: Professor of Personality and Individual Differences at the University of Cambridge (formerly graduate researcher at UT Austin), specializing in spatial psychometrics, regional personality patterns, and music preferences.
  • William B. Swann, Jr., Ph.D.: Professor of Social and Personality Psychology at the University of Texas at Austin, renowned for his formulation of Self-Verification Theory and research on identity fusion and self-concept preservation.

Correspondence regarding the instrument and its cross-cultural variants can be directed to the primary author, Dr. Samuel D. Gosling, via the Department of Psychology, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX 78712, or accessed through his institutional research repository (gosling.psy.utexas.edu).

4. Purpose

The primary rationale for developing the Ten Item Personality Measure was to resolve an intractable methodological challenge in empirical social sciences: the bandwidth-fidelity dilemma within constrained data-collection settings. For decades, personality assessment has been anchored by exhaustive diagnostic inventories, such as the 240-item NEO-PI-R, the 100-item Goldberg Adjective Checklist, and the 60-item NEO-FFI. While these instruments provide deep psychometric resolution across both broad domains and specific narrow facets, their administration requires anywhere from 15 to 45 minutes of concentrated respondent effort.

In many research designs, personality traits are not the primary focal dependent variable but rather covariate, control, or moderator variables. In settings such as longitudinal epidemiological cohorts (e.g., national household panels), experience sampling method (ESM) studies via mobile smartphones, large-scale consumer and political opinion polls, online experimental panels (e.g., Prolific, Amazon Mechanical Turk), and rapid behavioral laboratory protocols (such as speed-dating or dyadic interaction paradigms), administering a 44- or 240-item personality battery introduces profound survey fatigue. This fatigue leads to satisficing, unengaged responding, straight-lining, missing data, and high participant attrition. Researchers confronted with these barriers historically faced two undesirable choices: omit personality measurement entirely, or construct arbitrary, unvalidated single-item proxies.

The TIPI was systematically constructed to eliminate these compromises. Gosling and colleagues aimed to provide a standardized, empirically vetted, ultra-short instrument that captured the overarching variance of the Five-Factor Model in under one minute. The explicit design mandate was to maximize content representation: each Big Five trait is represented by one positive descriptor pair and one negative descriptor pair chosen specifically from opposite poles of distinct facets of that trait. Thus, the instrument captures the broad breadth of each personality domain rather than concentrating on an artificially narrow slice of variance.

Clinically and academically, the scale is indicated when:

  • Personality is assessed as a secondary moderator or control covariate in multidisciplinary studies.
  • Repeated measures or continuous daily longitudinal monitoring (e.g., intensive ecological momentary assessments) preclude lengthy instruments.
  • Participant cognitive capacity or endurance is limited (e.g., severely ill patients, elderly populations, or attention-deficit cohorts).
  • Massive multi-wave online studies necessitate minimizing dropout rates without relinquishing psychometrically validated domain-level scores.

5. Psychological Construct

The TIPI operationalizes personality through the Five-Factor Model (FFM), an empirically derived structural framework positing that individual differences in human behavior, affect, and cognition aggregate into five fundamental, orthogonal dimensions. Each dimension in the TIPI represents a bipolar continuum:

Extraversion (Items 1 and 6R)

Extraversion captures an individual's level of interpersonal engagement, sociability, assertiveness, and energetic approach to the social and physical environment. High scorers are energetic, highly talkative, assertive, and drawn to social stimulation, experiencing frequent positive affect. Low scorers (introverts) are reserved, quiet, autonomous, and self-contained, preferring solitude or smaller, less stimulating social environments. In the TIPI, Item 1 (“Extraverted, enthusiastic”) taps social energy, assertiveness, and high positive emotionality, whereas Item 6 (“Reserved, quiet”, reverse-scored) captures behavioral inhibition and preference for interpersonal distance.

Agreeableness (Items 2R and 7)

Agreeableness reflects an orientation toward interpersonal harmony, altruism, empathy, trust, and prosocial cooperation. Highly agreeable individuals prioritize collective well-being, display warmth, and show compassion toward others' distress. In contrast, individuals low in agreeableness are competitive, antagonistic, cynical, and challenging of others' motives. The TIPI represents Agreeableness via Item 7 (“Sympathetic, warm”), which assesses empathy and prosocial warmth, and Item 2 (“Critical, quarrelsome”, reverse-scored), which assesses interpersonal hostility, skepticism, and confrontational behavior.

Conscientiousness (Items 3 and 8R)

Conscientiousness characterizes an individual's capacity for self-regulation, impulse control, task persistence, organization, goal-directed behavior, and dutifulness. High scorers exhibit meticulous organization, thoroughness, long-term planning, and strong adherence to rules and obligations. Low scorers tend toward spontaneous action, disorganization, procrastination, and unreliability in structured settings. Within the TIPI, Item 3 (“Dependable, self-disciplined”) indexes task execution, reliability, and will to achieve, while Item 8 (“Disorganized, careless”, reverse-scored) identifies deficits in orderliness, attention to detail, and methodical self-regulation.

Emotional Stability vs. Neuroticism (Items 4R and 9)

Emotional Stability represents the capacity to maintain affective equilibrium, resilience in the face of environmental stressors, and freedom from chronic negative affectivity. In the TIPI, this dimension is framed in the positive direction (Emotional Stability) rather than its diagnostic inverse (Neuroticism). Individuals scoring high in Emotional Stability are calm, psychologically resilient, self-confident, and slow to anger or distress. Individuals scoring low (high neuroticism) experience chronic emotional volatility, vulnerability, anxiety, depressive moods, and hyper-reactivity to daily stressors. Item 9 (“Calm, emotionally stable”) benchmarks psychological equanimity, whereas Item 4 (“Anxious, easily upset”, reverse-scored) directly captures stress sensitivity and affective reactivity.

Openness to Experiences (Items 5 and 10R)

Openness to Experiences (alternatively labeled Intellect or Culture) delineates individual variations in cognitive curiosity, aesthetic sensitivity, imagination, novelty-seeking, and philosophical depth. High scorers welcome unconventional ideas, hold varied artistic and cultural interests, display high imaginative capability, and process information with intellectual complexity. Low scorers are conventional, practical, grounded in concrete realities, and comfortable with familiar, traditional routines. Item 5 (“Open to new experiences, complex”) targets intellectual curiosity, perceptual novelty, and psychological depth, while Item 10 (“Conventional, uncreative”, reverse-scored) measures preference for cognitive simplicity, adherence to conventionality, and aversion to abstract novelty.

6. Theoretical Framework

The foundational bedrock of the Ten Item Personality Measure rests upon the Lexical Hypothesis of personality, originally articulated by Sir Francis Galton (1884), refined by Gordon Allport and Henry Odbert (1936), and converted into mathematical factor-analytic structures by Raymond Cattell, Warren Norman, and Lewis R. Goldberg (1990). The lexical premise dictates that the most salient, socially significant, and evolutionarily adaptive phenotypic differences among human beings will eventually become encoded into natural language as single-word descriptors. Decades of taxonomic factor-analytic studies across diverse global linguistic systems consistently distilled these descriptors into five overarching, non-overlapping superordinate domains: the Big Five.

Subsequent structural work by Paul T. Costa Jr. and Robert R. McCrae codified these domains into the Five-Factor Theory (FFT) of personality, affirming that these dimensions represent endogenous basic tendencies that remain highly stable across the adult lifespan, display significant heritability in behavioral genetic studies ($h^2 \approx .40 – .50$), and transcend linguistic, racial, and geographic boundaries.

In conceptualizing the TIPI, Gosling and colleagues addressed the psychometric tensions inherent in classical test theory when applied to ultra-short instruments. Standard psychometric scale construction emphasizes high internal consistency (elevated Cronbach's alpha), which naturally guides researchers to select items that are highly semantically redundant (e.g., combining “outgoing” with “talkative”). However, as psychometrician Jum Nunnally observed, over-maximizing internal consistency in very short scales restricts the breadth of the construct, creating a “bloated specific”—a scale that measures a tiny, repetitive sub-facet very reliably, but fails to cover the overarching construct.

Gosling et al. addressed this via the attenuation paradox (Loevinger, 1954). Instead of picking synonymous descriptors, the authors selected item pairs that were conceptually distinct and located at opposite ends of the broad trait's constituent facets. For instance, in Conscientiousness, rather than measuring only orderliness, they paired “Dependable, self-disciplined” (deliberation and dutifulness facets) with “Disorganized, careless” (order and competence facets). Consequently, the TIPI optimizes content validity and multi-faceted representation across the structural domain, accepting modest inter-item correlations as the inevitable and statistically appropriate cost of comprehensive construct measurement in a two-item-per-factor framework.

7. Validity

Despite its minimal length, the TIPI has been subjected to extensive psychometric scrutiny across hundreds of independent empirical investigations worldwide.

Convergent Validity

In the seminal validation study conducted by Gosling, Rentfrow, and Swann (2003) on a sample of 1,813 university undergraduate students, convergent validity was established against two gold-standard multi-item instruments: the 44-item Big Five Inventory (BFI) and the 60-item NEO Five-Factor Inventory (NEO-FFI). The convergence was exceptionally high for a 10-item scale:

  • Extraversion: $r = .87$ with BFI Extraversion; $r = .74$ with NEO-FFI Extraversion.
  • Agreeableness: $r = .70$ with BFI Agreeableness; $r = .56$ with NEO-FFI Agreeableness.
  • Conscientiousness: $r = .75$ with BFI Conscientiousness; $r = .68$ with NEO-FFI Conscientiousness.
  • Emotional Stability: $r = .81$ with BFI Neuroticism (negative); $r = .73$ with NEO-FFI Neuroticism (negative).
  • Openness to Experience: $r = .65$ with BFI Openness; $r = .55$ with NEO-FFI Openness.

The mean convergent correlation between TIPI subscales and their respective BFI scales was $r = .77$, and with the NEO-FFI scales was $r = .65$. When corrected for the unreliability of the single- and two-item measures via the Spearman correction for attenuation, correlations between the underlying latent constructs assessed by the TIPI and the benchmark scales approached unity ($r > .90$).

Discriminant Validity

The discriminant validity of the TIPI matches the clear discriminant profiles of longer inventories. Inter-scale correlations among the five TIPI dimensions are exceptionally low, with average off-diagonal absolute correlations of $|r| = .18$, indicating that the five dimensions measure statistically distinct domains with negligible multi-collinearity. Furthermore, cross-correlations between non-matching dimensions across instruments (e.g., TIPI Extraversion correlating with BFI Conscientiousness) yield a mean absolute correlation of only $|r| = .13$, directly demonstrating that the TIPI shares variance almost exclusively with intended theoretical constructs.

Criterion and Behavioral Predictive Validity

Empirical studies comparing the predictive power of the TIPI against the BFI across diverse external criteria have documented remarkable equivalence in effect sizes:

  • Self-Observer Agreement: Observer-report studies (where independent peers or trained observers evaluate the participant) demonstrate mean convergent correlations between self-reports on the TIPI and peer ratings that average $r = .43$, consistent with the $r = .44$ observed using the comprehensive BFI.
  • External Behavioral Correlates: The TIPI successfully replicates known external criteria: Extraversion predicts social network size and expressive nonverbal gestures; Agreeableness correlates positively with prosocial volunteering and negatively with interpersonal workplace conflict; Conscientiousness predicts academic grade point average (GPA), goal completion, and health-promoting behaviors; Emotional Stability predicts lower baseline cortisol, reduced negative affect, and diminished somatic complaints; and Openness to Experience predicts artistic preferences, creative achievement, and liberal sociopolitical orientations.

8. Reliability

Evaluating the reliability of a two-item measure requires distinct analytical nuance. In classical test theory, Cronbach's coefficient alpha is a direct mathematical function of both the average inter-item correlation and the total number of items ($k$). Because $k=2$, Cronbach's alpha will naturally be lower than in scales containing 8, 12, or 48 items, even if the underlying construct fidelity is identical.

Internal Consistency Metrics

In the original validation study by Gosling et al. (2003), Cronbach's alpha coefficients for the two-item composites were:

  • Extraversion: $\alpha = .68$
  • Agreeableness: $\alpha = .40$
  • Conscientiousness: $\alpha = .50$
  • Emotional Stability: $\alpha = .73$
  • Openness to Experience: $\alpha = .45$

The overall mean internal consistency coefficient was $\alpha = .55$. While these values fall below the traditional psychometric rule of thumb ($lpha ge .70$), this is an intentional structural property of the instrument. The items were deliberately selected to tap disparate sub-facets of each construct. For example, Agreeableness pairs pro-social empathy (“Sympathetic, warm”) with an absence of interpersonal antagonism (“Critical, quarrelsome”). These behaviors represent distinct behavioral manifestations rather than redundant re-phrasings. Psychometricians emphasize that for 2-item scales, the mean inter-item correlation ($r$) is the appropriate index of internal consistency; for the TIPI, inter-item correlations typically fall cleanly within the ideal recommended range of $.25$ to $.50$.

Test-Retest Stability

Because personality traits represent enduring dispositions, test-retest reliability ($r_{tt}$) is the critical reliability indicator for ultra-short scales. Gosling et al. (2003) evaluated test-retest stability across a six-week interval among a sub-sample of university respondents. The observed test-retest correlations were strong and statistically significant ($p < .001$):

  • Extraversion: $r_{tt} = .77$
  • Agreeableness: $r_{tt} = .58$
  • Conscientiousness: $r_{tt} = .76$
  • Emotional Stability: $r_{tt} = .70$
  • Openness to Experience: $r_{tt} = .62$

The mean test-retest correlation was $r_{tt} = .72$, comparable to the six-week test-retest stability observed for the full-length 44-item BFI ($r_{tt} = .80$). These findings confirm that the TIPI exhibits temporal stability, capturing stable dispositional variance rather than fleeting situational states or transient response noise.

9. Factor Analysis

The internal structural validity of the TIPI has been evaluated using both Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) and Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) across numerous normative and cross-cultural samples.

Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA)

When subjected to EFA using Principal Axis Factoring or Principal Component Analysis with Varimax (orthogonal) or Promax (oblique) rotations, the ten items clearly load onto a robust five-factor solution. The primary item loadings consistently exceed $|.60|$ on their designated domain factors, with secondary cross-loadings remaining low (typically $|.15|$ or lower):

  • Factor 1 (Extraversion): Item 1 loads strongly positive ($.75$ to $.82$); Item 6 loads strongly negative ($-.70$ to $-.79$).
  • Factor 2 (Agreeableness): Item 7 loads positive ($.62$ to $.71$); Item 2 loads negative ($-.55$ to $-.68$).
  • Factor 3 (Conscientiousness): Item 3 loads positive ($.70$ to $.78$); Item 8 loads negative ($-.65$ to $-.74$).
  • Factor 4 (Emotional Stability): Item 9 loads positive ($.74$ to $.81$); Item 4 loads negative ($-.72$ to $-.80$).
  • Factor 5 (Openness to Experience): Item 5 loads positive ($.64$ to $.73$); Item 10 loads negative ($-.58$ to $-.69$).

Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) and Measurement Invariance

Evaluating the TIPI through standard Confirmatory Factor Analysis presents known statistical challenges. In classical CFA specifications, each latent variable is defined by only two item indicators, which causes an independent latent factor to be mathematically under-identified unless factor loadings are constrained to equality or latent factor covariances are freely estimated. Furthermore, because each item pair was selected to capture distinct facet poles rather than uniform facet expressions, conventional goodness-of-fit indices (such as Root Mean Square Error of Approximation [RMSEA], Comparative Fit Index [CFI], and Standardized Root Mean Square Residual [SRMR]) occasionally fall short of strict cutoff criteria (e.g., $\text{CFI} > .95$, $\text{RMSEA} < .06$) when zero cross-loadings and uncorrelated residual errors are imposed.

However, when modeled using Exploratory Structural Equation Modeling (ESEM) or when minor, theoretically sensible correlated uniqueness terms are permitted between negatively worded stems, the Five-Factor structure demonstrates satisfactory fit across large cohorts (e.g., $\text{CFI} \approx .93 – .96$, $\text{TLI} \approx .90 – .94$, $\text{RMSEA} \approx .04 – .06$, and $\text{SRMR} < .04$). Furthermore, multi-group confirmatory factor analyses demonstrate that the TIPI exhibits metric and scalar measurement invariance across biological sex, age brackets (from young adults to geriatric samples), and diverse mode of administrations (computer, mobile phone, and pencil-and-paper formats).

10. Instrument / Measurement Tool

The operational administration, composition, scoring algorithms, and technical parameters of the TIPI are detailed below:

  • Name of Instrument: Ten Item Personality Measure (TIPI)
  • Target Constructs: The Big Five personality domains (Extraversion, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, Emotional Stability, Openness to Experiences)
  • Administration Format: Self-report questionnaire, observer-report, or proxy-rating. Delivered via paper-and-pencil, online web forms, mobile survey interfaces, or auditory phone interviews.
  • Estimated Completion Time: Approximately 45 to 60 seconds.
  • Total Number of Items: 10 items (configured as descriptor pairs, with 2 items assigned to each of the 5 domains).
  • Response Scale: 7-point Likert rating scale, anchored as follows:
    • 1 = Disagree strongly
    • 2 = Disagree moderately
    • 3 = Disagree a little
    • 4 = Neither agree nor disagree
    • 5 = Agree a little
    • 6 = Agree moderately
    • 7 = Agree strongly
  • Scale Scoring Protocols & Formulas:
    • Five items are reverse-scored (indicated by “R”). Reverse scoring on a 7-point scale is computed via the formula: $\text{Score}_{\text{reversed}} = 8 – \text{Response}$. Specifically, items 2, 4, 6, 8, and 10 must be reversed prior to computing scale scores.
    • Scale composites are computed as the arithmetic mean of the two constituent items:
    • Extraversion: $[\text{Item 1} + (8 – \text{Item 6})] / 2$
    • Agreeableness: $[(8 – \text{Item 2}) + \text{Item 7}] / 2$
    • Conscientiousness: $[\text{Item 3} + (8 – \text{Item 8})] / 2$
    • Emotional Stability: $[(8 – \text{Item 4}) + \text{Item 9}] / 2$
    • Openness to Experiences: $[\text{Item 5} + (8 – \text{Item 10})] / 2$
  • Score Interpretation: Individual dimension scores range continuously from 1.0 to 7.0, with higher values reflecting a higher degree of that trait. Normative population means in general non-clinical samples typically range between 4.0 and 5.5, with Emotional Stability showing slightly lower population means and Agreeableness/Conscientiousness displaying moderate positive skew.

11. Permissions & Fee and Test Year

The Ten Item Personality Measure was developed in 2003 by Samuel D. Gosling, Peter J. Rentfrow, and William B. Swann, Jr., and published in the Journal of Research in Personality. The developers placed the scale into the public domain for academic, scientific, and personal use. As specified by Dr. Samuel D. Gosling via his laboratory portal at the University of Texas at Austin:

  • Permissions: The TIPI is freely accessible and open-access. No formal written permission, license fee, or royalty payment is required to use, reproduce, modify, or translate the instrument for non-commercial scientific research or educational objectives.
  • Commercial Applications: Commercial entities and corporate enterprises seeking to deploy the TIPI within proprietary commercial testing batteries, employment selection tools, or for-profit consumer software are requested to consult the primary authors and ensure standard scholarly attribution.
  • Citation Requirement: All research publications, technical reports, and presentations utilizing the instrument must formally cite the primary peer-reviewed validation publication: Gosling, S. D., Rentfrow, P. J., & Swann, W. B., Jr. (2003). A very brief measure of the Big-Five personality domains. Journal of Research in Personality, 37(6), 504–528.

12. References

  • Allport, G. W., & Odbert, H. S. (1936). Trait-names: A psycho-lexical study. Psychological Monographs, 47(1), i–171. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0093360
  • Costa, P. T., Jr., & McCrae, R. R. (1992). Revised NEO Personality Inventory (NEO-PI-R) and NEO Five-Factor Inventory (NEO-FFI) professional manual. Psychological Assessment Resources.
  • Goldberg, L. R. (1990). An alternative “description of personality”: The Big-Five factor structure. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 59(6), 1216–1229. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.59.6.1216
  • Goldberg, L. R. (1992). The development of markers for the Big-Five factor structure. Psychological Assessment, 4(1), 26–42. https://doi.org/10.1037/1040-3590.4.1.26
  • Gosling, S. D., Rentfrow, P. J., & Swann, W. B., Jr. (2003). A very brief measure of the Big-Five personality domains. Journal of Research in Personality, 37(6), 504–528. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0092-6566(03)00046-1
  • John, O. P., Donahue, E. M., & Kentle, R. L. (1991). The Big Five Inventory–Versions 4a and 54. Institute of Personality and Social Research, University of California, Berkeley.
  • John, O. P., & Srivastava, S. (1999). The Big Five trait taxonomy: History, measurement, and theoretical perspectives. In L. A. Pervin & O. P. John (Eds.), Handbook of personality: Theory and research (2nd ed., pp. 102–138). Guilford Press.
  • Loevinger, J. (1954). The attenuation paradox in test theory. Psychological Bulletin, 51(5), 493–504. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0058543
  • McCrae, R. R., & Costa, P. T., Jr. (2008). The Five-Factor Theory of personality. In O. P. John, R. W. Robins, & L. A. Pervin (Eds.), Handbook of personality: Theory and research (3rd ed., pp. 159–181). Guilford Press.
  • Muck, P. M., Hell, B., & Gosling, S. D. (2007). Construct validation of a short Five-Factor Model instrument: A comparison of the TIPI-G and the NEO-PI-R. European Journal of Psychological Assessment, 23(3), 166–175. https://doi.org/10.1027/1015-5759.23.3.166
  • Nunnally, J. C. (1978). Psychometric theory (2nd ed.). McGraw-Hill.
  • Romero, E., Villar, P., Gómez-Fraguela, J. A., & López-Romero, L. (2012). Measuring personality traits with ultra-short forms: A study of the Ten Item Personality Measure (TIPI) in a Spanish sample. Personality and Individual Differences, 53(3), 289–294. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2012.03.022
  • Soto, C. J., & John, O. P. (2017). The next Big Five Inventory (BFI-2): Developing and assessing a hierarchical model with 15 facets to enhance bandwidth, fidelity, and predictive power. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 113(1), 117–143. https://doi.org/10.1037/pspp0000096

13. Items of the Scale

Below are the authentic scale items in their original language as published in the standard psychometric validation studies, without modification or translation to preserve instrument validity and reliability:

Here are a number of personality traits that may or may not apply to you. Please write a number next to each statement to indicate the extent to which you agree or disagree with that statement. You should rate the extent to which the pair of traits applies to you, even if one characteristic applies more strongly than the other.

Response Scale:
1 = Disagree strongly
2 = Disagree moderately
3 = Disagree a little
4 = Neither agree nor disagree
5 = Agree a little
6 = Agree moderately
7 = Agree strongly

I see myself as:

  1. _____ Extraverted, enthusiastic.
  2. _____ Critical, quarrelsome.
  3. _____ Dependable, self-disciplined.
  4. _____ Anxious, easily upset.
  5. _____ Open to new experiences, complex.
  6. _____ Reserved, quiet.
  7. _____ Sympathetic, warm.
  8. _____ Disorganized, careless.
  9. _____ Calm, emotionally stable.
  10. _____ Conventional, uncreative.
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Cite This Article

Looti, M. (2026, September 25). Ten Item Personality Measure (TIPI). PSYCHOLOGICAL DATABASE. https://english.arabpsychology.com/scales/ten-item-personality-measure-tipi/
Looti, Mohammed. “Ten Item Personality Measure (TIPI).” PSYCHOLOGICAL DATABASE, 25 September 2026, https://english.arabpsychology.com/scales/ten-item-personality-measure-tipi/.
Looti, Mohammed. “Ten Item Personality Measure (TIPI).” PSYCHOLOGICAL DATABASE. September 25, 2026. https://english.arabpsychology.com/scales/ten-item-personality-measure-tipi/.