Construction and Validation of the HEXACO-MFC in German and English Samples

The HEXACO-60 is a popular rating-scale questionnaire for the assessment of the HEXACO personality traits: honesty-humility, emotionality, extraversion, agreeableness versus anger, conscientiousness, and openness to experience. Given the disadvantages of the rating scale format, a multidimensional forced-choice (MFC) version of the HEXACO-60 would be useful. In this study, we describe the construction and validation of the HEXACO-MFC. We analyzed data from four samples (Ns range from 770 to 977), two of which filled out the original HEXACO-60 and two of which filled out the new HEXACO-MFC. For validation purposes, we also administered other personality questionnaires on the Big Five and the Dark Triad traits, as well as questions on criteria. In addition, we investigated the measurement invariance of the HEXACO-MFC across German and English versions. Overall, the convergent and discriminant validity of the HEXACO-MFC traits with other personality traits was satisfactory, and criterion-related validities provided further evidence for the usefulness of the HEXACO-MFC. Measurement invariance across German and English versions existed for most item blocks in the HEXACO-MFC. Thus, the HEXACO-MFC can be recommended for the valid assessment of the HEXACO traits in the MFC format.