Measurement Invariance and Sex and Age Differences of the Big Five Inventory-2: Evidence From the Russian Version

The Big Five Inventory-2 (BFI-2) is a recently published 60-item questionnaire that measures personality traits within the five-factor model framework. An important aspect of the BFI-2 is that it measures the traits at both the domain and facet levels and also controls acquiescence bias via the balanced number of true- and false-keyed items across the domains and facets. The current research evaluates factorial measurement invariance of a Russian version of the BFI-2 across sex and age within samples of 1,024 university students (Study 1) and 1,029 Internet users (Study 2). Across these samples, men scored lower on the domains of negative emotionality and agreeableness and slightly higher on extraversion. Sex differences were also obtained on various facets. In the Internet sample, age correlated modestly with several Big Five domains in accordance with the well-documented maturity principle. The newly developed Russian version of BFI-2 showed good reliability and validity across both samples. Moreover, random intercept exploratory factor analyses showed that the BFI-2 displayed a hierarchical five-domain-15-facet structure that demonstrated strict measurement invariance across sex and age.