Development of a Forced-Choice Personality Inventory via Thurstonian Item Response Theory (TIRT)

Area of Science:

• Psychological assessment
• Personality psychology
• Quantitative psychology

Background:

• The Five-Factor Model (FFM) is a widely accepted framework for personality traits.
• Developing reliable and valid personality inventories is crucial for psychological research and practice.
• Forced-choice formats can mitigate response biases like social desirability.

Purpose of the Study:

• To create a forced-choice personality inventory assessing student traits within the FFM framework.
• To analyze the factorial structure of the developed inventory using Thurstonian Item Response Theory (TIRT).

Main Methods:

• Generation of 200 items representing the five FFM dimensions.
• Item pool reduction to 75 items using Principal Axis Factoring and reliability analysis.
• Organization of items into 25 blocks of three statements (triplets).
• Application of Thurstonian Item Response Theory (TIRT) and structural equation modeling (SEM) on two student samples (N=1484, N=823).

Main Results:

• A final 75-item forced-choice personality inventory was developed.
• The TIRT model indicated an adequate fit for the inventory's factorial structure.
• The methodology balanced social desirability across item blocks.

Conclusions:

• The study successfully developed and validated a forced-choice personality inventory based on the FFM.
• The TIRT approach provided a robust method for examining the inventory's structure.
• Future research should focus on establishing the scale's test-retest reliability and various forms of validity.