Development and validation of Thai versions of Big Five measures from the international personality item pool

The Big Five is the most popular personality taxonomy used to characterize fundamental personality traits and their individual differences. This model has been well replicated across English speaking samples and several other languages. However, two key issues have challenged the validity of the cultural group comparisons using Big Five measures of personality. The first is methodology for translation and adaptation, and the second is construct equivalence across cultures. The International Personality Item Pool (IPIP; Goldberg, 1992) has been used to create several non-commercial versions of Big Five measures (IPIP-BFMs), with a common set of 50 items typically translated into other languages. The consistent lack of evidence to support the use of the standard American set in other languages gave rise to the idea of developing a customized 50-item IPIP that would better fit Thai culture.

One hundred items from the IPIP website were translated into the Thai language following guidelines developed by the International Test Commission (ITC, 2017). When psychometric properties for the original 50-item IPIP-BFM were investigated in Thai and American samples, weaknesses in model fit were detected. Fifty items more suitable to the Thai culture were then selected from the 100-item pool to create a customized 50-item IPIP given to 1,878 students from high schools in Thailand. The results produced psychometrically sound scores for measuring the Big Five with Thai adolescents. Procedures used in the study also provide a template for developing and validating new personality instruments for use with native speakers of other languages.