Abstract
Introduction There is growing interest in the fields of psychiatry and psychology in investigating the relationship between personality and psychopathology. The Big-5 is a model developed to investigate five personality dimensions: Extroversion, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, Neuroticism, and Openness. In the present study, we describe the process of translation into Brazilian Portuguese and adaptation of a free tool to evaluate the Big-5 model: The Big-5 Inventory (BFI). The instrument has 44 items with a Likert response scale ranging from 1 to 5.
Objectives To translate and adapt the BFI into Brazilian Portuguese.
Methods The adaptation was conducted in the following steps: 1) Translation, 2) Evaluation Committee, 3) Back-translation, 4) Pilot study, 5) Evaluation Committee, and 6) Application. The sample comprised 490 participants from various regions of Brazil. The participants’ ages ranged from 18 to 71 years, most of them had completed high school (62.9%), and the majority were women (75%).
Results A model with the following fit indexes was found: χ2/df: 1.954; goodness fit index (GFI): 0.924; comparative fit index (CFI): 0.920; and root mean square error of approximation (RMSEA): 0.044.
Conclusion The results are suggestive that the Brazilian version of this instrument has good psychometric properties and represent a cost-free option for investigating associations with the Big-5 in psychiatry.
Personality; BFI; cross-cultural adaptation
Introduction
One of the best-known constructs in the study of personality is the Big Five Factors theory (Big-5), which involves five dimensions of personality: Neuroticism, Conscientiousness, Agreeableness, Openness, and Extraversion.1 Each trait encompasses different characteristics of an individual: Openness is related to creativity and imagination; Conscientiousness is related to organization and reliability; Extroversion is a tendency towards sociability and assertiveness; Agreeableness is a tendency towards prosocial attitudes and altruism; and Neuroticism is a tendency to sadness and negative emotions.2
Researchers have been investigating the association of the Big Five model with psychiatric disorders, psychological well-being and general well-being.3 - 6 A recent systematic review of stroke patients showed that personality may indicate prognosis for treatment. The study demonstrated that post-stroke patients who had high Neuroticism scores were more likely to be affected by depression.7 Another study identified a strong association between one’s ability to delay gratification and the Conscientiousness trait, which is especially relevant to health problems such as overweight, drug abuse and risky sexual behavior.8
In Brazil, the most used inventory for evaluating the Big-5 model is the NEO Personality Inventory (NEO-PI-R), prepared by Costa and McRae,9 adapted to Brazilian Portuguese by Carmen Flores Medonza, and published by Vetor.10 Its use in research is limited, however, because it is restricted to psychologists, and use is prohibited for other professionals whose research could greatly benefit from assessment of the Big-5 model, such as psychiatrists, neurologists, and neuroscientists. Furthermore, the NEO-PI-R can only be acquired by purchasing it for a fee, which poses an additional difficulty, especially at a time when the country’s research funding is suffering from drastic budget cuts.
The Big-5 Inventory (BFI) is an instrument for use in research, consisting of 44 Likert-type questions, designed to assess the five major personality factors. The BFI is an instrument that has been used in research in several countries,2 for example: in France with higher education students with an average age of 21 years11 ; in the Bolivian Amazon area with farmers aged from 20 to 88 years12 ; in Rwanda and the Philippines, with young people and adolescents13 with average ages of 21 and 15.5 years for each country, respectively; with young Chinese people (average age of 25.3 years) residing in Germany14 ; in England with adults aged from 20 to 80 years15 ; and in New Zealand with construction workers aged from 20 to 50 years.16
Based on the evidence presented above, it is necessary to make a free instrument available to assess the five major personality traits, which would be very useful for researchers in Brazil as well.17
Methods
The present study consisted of the translation and cross-cultural adaptation of the original instrument from English (North American) into Brazilian Portuguese. The instrument is free to use for research purposes.
The translation process was based on the general guidelines described by Hungerbuhler and Wang17 and the International Test Commission,18 and consisted of the following steps:
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Translation: two independent translators translated the original Big Five Inventory into Brazilian Portuguese.
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Evaluation Committee: two translators with experience in Psychology and Psychiatry analyzed and produced a synthesis version.
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Back-translation: a bilingual American researcher (English and Portuguese) performed a back-translation of the synthesis version.
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Pilot study: the version was administered using Google forms to 46 participants in a test and re-test format.
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Evaluation Committee: a group of neuropsychology researchers conducted a new analysis, making some alterations, and producing a definitive version. The evaluation committee was composed of two Ph.D. professors with extensive experience in psychiatry and psychology; three Master’s students in health sciences, one psychologist, and two undergraduate students. The items were presented on a slide, and participants were asked which items they agreed with and which items they would suggest changing.
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Final administration: the definitive version of the instrument was administered and validated with confirmatory factor analysis (CFA).
Sample
The sample size was based on 10:1 ratio,17 to achieve a proportion of 10 subjects for each item of the instrument. This ratio is widely used for instrument validation.
Sample selection can be characterized as non-probabilistic and by convenience, recruiting 490 participants (369 women, 118 men, and three non-binary people) (M = 35.01, standard deviation [SD]: 11.99), with different educational levels. Majorities had completed college (306), were single (297), and were from the northeast region of Brazil (327).
Procedures
Administration of the definitive version of the Brazilian Portuguese Big Five Inventory instrument was conducted between May 3, 2021, and June 13, 2021, via Google Forms. A link was posted on social networks along with an ad that invited several people to answer the survey. The ad made it clear that the survey should only be answered by people over 18. The ad also stated how long it should take to complete the instrument. After clicking on the survey link, the participant would first be asked to choose whether or not to sign the informed consent form, which contained all the information about the project, as well as contact information. The present study was approved by the Research Ethics Committee (protocol 36899520.6.0000.5526) at the Universidade Estadual de Santa Cruz (UESC), in accordance with Conselho Nacional de Saúde/Brazilian Ministry of Health (CNS/MS) Resolution MS n. 466/2012.
Data analysis
AMOS 23.0 was used to test the models. The maximum likelihood model (MLE) was used, respecting a minimum of 10 observations per item.19 After specifying and estimating the models, their applicability was evaluated against a set of fit indices. The fit indices analyzed were chi-square by degrees of freedom (χ2 /df), for which values greater than 2 are acceptable20 ; the comparative fit index (CFI) and goodness of fit index (GFI), which can both vary from 0 to 1, where values greater than 0.90 indicate an adequate model according to Bentler and Bonnet20 ; the root mean square error of approximation (RMSEA), for which a value less than 0.06 indicates acceptable adequacy21 ; and the Akaike information criterion (AIC), which evaluates the simplicity of the model by testing the lowest value in the model.
Composite reliability (CR) and average variance extracted (AVE) were also analyzed, both of which enable us to assess the quality of the instrument.22 Acceptable reference values for CR and AVE are greater than 0.722 and greater than or equal to 0.5,23 respectively. Cronbach’s alpha was also calculated and we set the reference value at > 0.7.
Results
The original, translated, and back-translated versions of the Big Five Inventory are shown in Table 1 . The review committee decided to retain the same instrument title, adding the language version to it, as follows: The Big Five Inventory, Brazilian Portuguese version (Supplementary Material S1, available online-only).
The mean item response values ranged from 1.48 ± 0.73 (item 20) to 3.31 ± 0.77 (item 15). The univariate normality values tended to lie in a range associated with a normal distribution. The mean and standard deviations of the factors were as follows: Extroversion (M = 3.30; SD = 0.74), Agreeableness (M = 3.68; SD = 0.54), Conscientiousness (M = 3.74; SD = 0.64), Neuroticism (M = 2.95; SD = 0.81), and Openness (M = 3.78; SD = 0.59) ( Table 2 ).
Table 3 shows the result of the confirmatory factor analysis.
Seven models were tested, three of which have been used in prior literature (M4, M5, and M6). The M4 and M5 models removed items 2, 4, 17, 19, 22, 27, 35, and 37, the former without correlation between the factors and the latter correlating the factors. Model M6 was estimated without the aforementioned items, but with inclusion of two second-order factors. In M1, a single factor was used containing all items. In M3, all items that had factor loadings less than 0.3 were removed (2, 12, 22, 35, 37). In M7, items that presented residual covariances were removed until the model was adjusted.
The original BFI model with five factors and 44 items (M3) had several adjustment problems (CFI and GFI < 0.90), suggesting that this factor structure does not satisfactorily represent the data. Analysis of the coefficients (standardized and non-standardized) for model 3 (BFI) revealed that item loadings ranged from 0.05 (item 12) to 0.79 (item 39) and all of these parameters were significant at p < 0.001. The factor correlations ranged from -0.46 (p < 0.001), for Neuroticism and Conscientiousness, to 0.53 (p < 0.001), for Extroversion and Agreeableness.
Analysis of the standardized and non-standardized coefficients of the factor loadings of Model 8 (BFI) revealed that the item loadings ranged from 0.39 (item 17) to 0.76 (item 9) and all of these parameters were significant at p < 0.001 (R2 > 0.19). The correlations between the residual errors of the following items were: items 11 and 23 (0.28), items 8 and 18 (0.23); items 9 and 10 (0.24); items 14 and 19 (0.18); items 9 and 10 (0.24); items 40 and 44 (0.19). The correlations between factors ranged from -0.50 (p < 0.001), for Neuroticism and Conscientiousness, to 0.69 (p < 0.001), for Extroversion and Openness ( Figure 1 ).
Covariances between the following items were added: 11 – É cheia de energia ; 23 – Tende a ser preguiçosa ; 8 – Pode ser desleixada para fazer as coisas ; 23 – Tende a ser preguiçosa ; 9 – É tranquila, lida bem com estresse ; 10 – É curiosa, interessada em várias coisas diferentes ; 40 – Gosta de refletir, brincar com as ideias ; 44 – É sofisticada em arte, música ou literatura .
The results in Table 4 demonstrate that, in general, all factors presented adequate CR, with values above 0.7. The factors had acceptable AVE values, except for Openness, which was borderline.
Cronbach’s alpha reached adequate indices except for the Agreeableness factor: Agreeableness, 0.632; Extroversion, 0.8; Openness, 0.74; Neuroticism, 0.82; and Conscientiousness, 0.76.
Discussion
The Big Five Inventory, Brazilian Portuguese version, showed, in general, adequate results in terms of reliability. Data are consistent with the Italian, Danish, Dutch, German, and English versions.2 , 27 - 30 This demonstrates the instrument’s high degree of applicability.
The process of translation followed the stages of translation, synthesis, back-translation, committee analysis, pre-test and application, as the model is related to that described by Beaton et al.31
Care was taken to use shorter sentences in the translation from English to Portuguese, since, according to Pallson et al.,27 long phrases hinder the ability of participants in pain and the elderly to use the instrument.
Cronbach’s α values were above the recommended cutoffs (0.7) for the Conscientiousness, Neuroticism, Openness, and Extraversion items, demonstrating good internal consistency. However, the Agreeableness domain had scores below the ideal value, which corroborates findings for the German, Danish, and Italian versions, at 0.67, 0.66, and 0.69 respectively.27 , 28 , 30
Regarding the construct validity of the Big Five Inventory, CFA showed that the model (M8) with 25 items had better fit indexes than the original model (M3) with 44 items. The models suggested by Benet-Martinez and John,25 Chiorri et al.,26 and Jang et al.27 had fit indices below the reference values. Model 7 had good fit indices, but the extraversion factor only had three items, while Model 8, with four items for the extraversion factor had better results.
The individual analysis of the parameters estimated showed that the loadings of most items onto their respective factors were greater than 0.40, except for item 17.
Regarding reliability, it is known that CR is a more accurate indicator of precision than Cronbach’s alpha, because CR factor loads are free to vary among themselves, whereas in Cronbach’s alpha, factor loads are fixed as equal. The CR is therefore able to produce better adjusted accuracy indices. All factors had values above 0.7, which indicates homogeneity between items.
Regarding the AVE, all results were above the reference value (0.5), except for the Openness factor, which had a borderline index. This means that most factors (latent variables) explain more than half of the variance of all of the items they contain, according to Valentini and Damásio.32
The validated model (M8) retained 25 items and maintained the five factors that support the Big Five theory.2 Church and Burke33 point out difficulties with use of CFA in personality instruments, since there are restrictions to assessment of the personality structure. The original model (M3), for example, had low fit indices. Other models observed in the literature also failed to achieve adequate fit indices, Benet-Martinez and John,24 Danu,34 Little et al.,35 Marsh et al.36
The present study has some limitations, including the following: the sample was selected by convenience and was non-probabilistic; and the sample contained majorities of females and northeast Brazilian participants. Invariance was not a study goal because groups are not balanced by gender or region. We suggest that future studies perform invariance analysis.
Conclusion
Research associated with personality has increased considerably, which highlights the need for a measurement instrument that can provide more accurate measurements. The Big Five Inventory is used worldwide and proves to be this instrument.
There is also a need for free instruments to support research producing evidence, since this will facilitate replicability and increase researchers’ access to studies involving personality. In Brazil there is a need for more studies involving personality and this instrument could substantially contribute to increase such research.
Acknowledgements
This study received financial support from the Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado da Bahia (FAPESB).
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Publication Dates
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Publication in this collection
10 July 2023 -
Date of issue
2023
History
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Received
09 Mar 2021 -
Accepted
19 Apr 2022