The Big Five Inventory-2 in Korea: Validation and Cross-Cultural Comparisons with the U.S. and Chinese Versions

Abstract

The Big Five Inventory-2 (BFI-2) has enjoyed global popularity due to its good balance of content coverage and brevity and has been officially translated into 12 languages in addition to the original English version. The current study aimed to further enhance the cultural accessibility of the BFI-2 by translating it into the Korean language and comprehensively validating the Korean version in two South Korean samples: working adults and college students. Across the two samples, the Korean BFI-2 demonstrated good reliability (e.g., test-retest reliability, Cronbach’s alpha), construct validity (e.g., convergent/discriminant validity), and criterion-related validity with a wide range of outcome measures. Additionally, we compared the psychometric properties of the Korean BFI-2 to those of the original English and Chinese versions to further establish its comparability with other language versions. Overall, our results demonstrate that the Korean BFI-2 is a reliable and valid personality measure that can be confidently used by other researchers. Implications, limitations, and future directions were discussed.

Keywords

Big Five personality assessment validation Korean hierarchical structure

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