Establishing the validity and reliability of the Project Talent Personality Inventory

Project Talent is a national longitudinal study that started in 1960. The original sample included over 440,000 students, which amounted to a 5% representative sample of high school students across the United States. Previous research has not yet established the validity and reliability of the personality measure used in this study, that is, the Project Talent Personality Inventory (PTPI). Given the potential interest and use of the PTPI in forthcoming research, the goals of the present paper were to establish (a) the construct and predictive validity and (b) the internal consistency and test-retest reliability of the PTPI. This information will be valuable to researchers who might be interested in using the PTPI to predict life course outcomes, such as mortality, occupational success, relationship success, and health. Study 1 found that the 10 sub-scales of the PTPI showed good internal consistency reliability, as well as good construct and predictive validity. With the use of several modern personality measures, we showed how the 10 PTPI scales can be mapped onto the Big Five personality traits, and we examined their relations with health, well-being, and life satisfaction outcomes. Study 2 found that the 10 PTPI scales showed good test-retest reliability. Together, these findings allow researchers to better understand and use the PTPI scales, as they are available in Project Talent.