Do self-reports and informant-ratings measure the same personality constructs?

Personality researchers often supplement or substitute self-reports with ratings from knowledgeable informants, at least implicitly assuming that the same constructs are being measured regardless of the source of ratings. However, measurement invariance (MI) of personality constructs across these rating types has rarely been empirically tested. Here, this was done for the Five-Factor Model domains and their 30 facets (N = 3,253). All facets and all domains but Agreeableness met the level of invariance (metric MI) required for comparing the relative standings of individuals across self-reports and informant-ratings, which is what researchers mostly do. However, ten facets and the Agreeableness domain failed to achieve the level of invariance (scalar MI) recommended when comparing mean scores. In conclusion, self-reports and informant-ratings appear to measure similar constructs for most research purposes

Mean Profiles of the NEO Personality Inventory

The Revised NEO Personality Inventory (NEO-PI-R, Costa & McCrae, 1992) and its latest version, the NEO-PI-3, were designed to measure 30 distinctive personality traits, which are grouped into Neuroticism, Extraversion, Openness, Agreeableness, and Conscientiousness domains. The mean self-rated NEO-PI-R scores for 30 subscales have been reported for 36 countries or cultures (McCrae, 2002, Appendix 1). As a follow-up, this study reports the mean scores of the NEO-PI-R/3 for 71,334 participants from 76 samples and 62 different countries or cultures and 37 different languages. Mean differences in personality traits across countries and cultures were about 8 times smaller than differences between any two individuals randomly selected from any of these samples. Nevertheless, systematic differences can be observed in the aggregate personality profiles, in which Anglophonic and Nordic countries are distinguished from the rest of the world. This study provides further evidence that country/culture mean scores in personality are replicable and can provide reliable information about personality dispositions

Intraindividual Variability and Temporal Stability of Mid-Sleep on Free and Workdays

People differ in their sleep timings that are often referred to as a chronotype and can be operationalized as mid-sleep (midpoint between sleep onset and wake-up). The aims of the present studies were to examine intraindividual variability and longer-term temporal stability of mid-sleep on free and workdays, while also considering the effect of age. We used data from a 2-week experience sampling study of British university students (Study 1) and from a panel study of Estonian adults who filled in the Munich Chronotype Questionnaire twice up to 5 years apart (Study 2). Results of Study 1 showed that roughly 50% of the variance in daily mid-sleep scores across the 14-day period was attributed to intraindividual variability as indicated by the intraclass correlation coefficient. However, when the effect of free versus workdays was considered, the intraindividual variability in daily mid-sleep across 2 weeks was 0.71 the size of the interindividual variability. In Study 2, mid-sleep on free and workdays showed good levels of temporal stability—the retest correlations of mid-sleep on free and workdays were 0.66 and 0.58 when measured twice over a period of 0-1 to 5 years. The retest stability of mid-sleep scores on both free and workdays sharply increased from young adulthood and reached their peak when participants were in late 40 to early 50 years of age, indicating that age influences the stability of mid-sleep. Future long-term longitudinal studies are necessary to explore how age-related life circumstances and other possible factors may influence the intraindividual variability and temporal stability of mid-sleep