The Big Five Inventory-Short Form (BFI-S) is a 15-item abbreviated version of the widely-used Big Five Inventory, designed to provide efficient yet reliable assessment of the five major personality dimensions. Developed by Lang and colleagues (2011) from the original 44-item BFI, this shortened version maintains strong psychometric properties while dramatically reducing administration time, making it ideal for research contexts where brief personality assessment is needed but ultra-brief measures sacrifice too much reliability.
The BFI-S addresses a common dilemma in personality research: comprehensive personality inventories like the NEO-PI-3 (240 items) provide detailed, reliable assessment but are impractical for many research applications, while ultra-brief measures like the TIPI (10 items) are quick but suffer from low reliability. The BFI-S occupies the middle ground, offering a practical compromise.
The Sweet Spot in Brief Personality Assessment
Brief personality measures exist along a continuum of trade-offs between comprehensiveness and efficiency. The BFI-S represents what many researchers consider the optimal balance point:
Compared to ultra-brief measures (TIPI, 10 items):
Higher internal consistency (50% more items per dimension)
Better content coverage of each personality domain
More reliable for individual assessment
Adequate sensitivity for detecting change over time
Compared to comprehensive measures (NEO-PI-3, 240 items):
94% reduction in administration time
Minimal participant burden and fatigue
Maintains 85-90% of validity with 94% fewer items
Practical for repeated measurement designs
Compared to medium-length measures (NEO-FFI, 60 items):
75% time savings while maintaining comparable validity
Better suited for large-scale surveys and panel studies
Easier to translate and validate cross-culturally
This strategic positioning makes the BFI-S particularly valuable for longitudinal research requiring multiple personality assessments, large-scale surveys where personality is one of several measured constructs, and cross-cultural studies where translation and administration costs must be minimized.
Theoretical Foundation
The BFI-S is based on the Big Five model of personality, which organizes personality traits into five broad dimensions: Extraversion, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, Neuroticism (Emotional Stability), and Openness to Experience. This model emerged from decades of lexical research and represents the most robust framework for understanding personality across cultures.
Evidence-based item selection:
Rather than arbitrarily selecting items from the original BFI, Lang and colleagues (2011) employed a systematic approach:
Factor loading prioritization: Selected items with the highest loadings on their target factors, ensuring each item strongly represents its dimension.
Content representation: Chose items that best capture the breadth of each Big Five domain, maintaining diverse content coverage despite fewer items.
Psychometric optimization: Tested multiple item combinations to maximize reliability and validity while minimizing redundancy.
Cross-validation: Verified that the selected items maintained their psychometric properties across independent samples and cultural groups.
Hierarchical trait structure:
With 3 items per dimension, the BFI-S measures personality at the broad domain level rather than attempting to assess specific facets within each dimension. This is an appropriate design choice—3 items cannot adequately measure 6 facets per domain (as in the NEO-PI-3), but they can reliably assess the overarching personality dimension.
The BFI-S thus provides domain-level personality description suitable for research examining broad personality effects, personality as a control variable, or personality profiles at the group level. It should not be used when detailed facet-level assessment is required or when individual clinical assessment is needed.
📊 Optimal Balance: The BFI-S provides the best compromise between assessment brevity and measurement reliability in the brief Big Five inventory family.
Key Features
Assessment Characteristics
15 items total (3 items per Big Five dimension)
5-8 minutes administration time
Ages 16+ through adult populations
5-point Likert scale for balanced response options
Domain-level assessment of broad personality dimensions
Free to use for research and educational purposes
Big Five Dimensions Assessed
Extraversion – Sociability, assertiveness, energy level
Assess your personality across the five fundamental dimensions in 5-8 minutes.
Scoring and Interpretation
Response Format
Participants rate their agreement with each statement using a 5-point scale:
1 = Disagree strongly
2 = Disagree a little
3 = Neither agree nor disagree
4 = Agree a little
5 = Agree strongly
Complete BFI-S Items
Instructions:“How well do the following statements describe your personality? Please rate each statement.”
“I see myself as someone who…”
Extraversion (3 items):
…is talkative
…is reserved (R)
…is outgoing, sociable
Agreeableness (3 items): 4. …is helpful and unselfish with others 5. …has a forgiving nature 6. …is generally trusting
Conscientiousness (3 items): 7. …does a thorough job 8. …does things efficiently 9. …makes plans and follows through with them
Neuroticism (3 items): 10. …worries a lot 11. …gets nervous easily 12. …is relaxed, handles stress well (R)
Openness to Experience (3 items): 13. …is original, comes up with new ideas 14. …values artistic, aesthetic experiences 15. …is sophisticated in art, music, or literature
Scoring Procedure
Step 1: Reverse score items marked (R)
Items 2 and 12: Reverse score = 6 – original score
Step 2: Calculate dimension scores by averaging the 3 items for each domain:
Copyright and Usage Responsibility: Check that you have the proper rights and permissions to use this assessment tool in your research. This may include purchasing appropriate licenses, obtaining permissions from authors/copyright holders, or ensuring your usage falls within fair use guidelines.
The BFI-S is freely available for research and educational purposes. The measure was developed from the public domain Big Five Inventory and is available without licensing fees for non-commercial academic research.
Proper Attribution: When using or referencing this scale, cite the original development study:
Lang, F. R., John, D., Lüdtke, O., Schupp, J., & Wagner, G. G. (2011). Short assessment of the Big Five: Robust across survey methods except telephone interviewing. Behavior Research Methods, 43(2), 548-567.
Lang, F. R., John, D., Lüdtke, O., Schupp, J., & Wagner, G. G. (2011). Short assessment of the Big Five: Robust across survey methods except telephone interviewing. Behavior Research Methods, 43(2), 548-567.
Validation Studies:
Hahn, E., Gottschling, J., & Spinath, F. M. (2012). Short measurements of personality – Validity and reliability of the GSOEP Big Five Inventory (BFI-S). Journal of Research in Personality, 46(3), 355-359.
Zecca, G., Röcke, C., Alemand, M., Martin, M., Dubosson, F., & Zilioli, M. (2013). Validation of a French short form of the Big Five Inventory (BFI-10). Frontiers in Psychology, 4, 809.
Comparative Research:
Ziegler, M., Kemper, C. J., & Kruyen, P. (2014). Short scales – Five misunderstandings and ways to overcome them. Journal of Individual Differences, 35(4), 185-189.
Criterion Validity:
Vedel, A. (2014). The Big Five and tertiary academic performance: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Personality and Individual Differences, 71, 66-76.
Salgado, J. F. (2003). Predicting job performance using FFM and non-FFM personality measures. Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, 76(3), 323-346.
