Use of the Transparent Bipolar Inventory to measure the big-five personality factors in an epidemiological 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 participating in the second wave of a longitudinal epidemiological study. Confirmatory factor analysis of the TBI items showed that the five-factor model provided an acceptable, but not impressive, fit to the data. In contrast to Goldberg's analyses with university students, the factors 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 usage. 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.