The Big Five Inventory (BFI) is a self-report measure designed to assess the high-order personality traits of Extraversion, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, Neuroticism, and Openness. As part of the International Sexuality Description Project, the BFI was translated from English into 28 languages and administered to 17,837 individuals from 56 nations. The resulting cross-cultural data set was used to address three main questions: Does the factor structure of the English BFI fully replicate across cultures? How valid are the BFI trait profiles of individual nations? And how are personality traits distributed throughout the world? The five-dimensional structure was robust across major regions of the world. Trait levels were related in predictable ways to self-esteem, sociosexuality, and national personality profiles. People from the geographic regions of South America and East Asia were significantly different in openness from those inhabiting other world regions. The discussion focuses on limitations of the current data set and important directions for future research.

As part of the International Sexuality Description Project, a total of 17,804 participants from 62 cultural regions completedthe RelationshipQuestionnaire(RQ), a self-reportmeasure of adult romanticattachment. Correlational analyses within each culture suggested that the Model of Self and the Model of Other scales of the RQ were psychometrically valid within most cultures. Contrary to expectations, the Model of Self and Model of Other dimensions of the RQ did not underlie the four-category model of attachment in the same way across all cultures. Analyses of specific attachment styles revealed that secure romantic attachment was normative in 79% of cultures and that preoccupied romantic attachment was particularly prevalent in East Asian cultures. Finally, the romantic attachment profiles of individual nations were correlated with sociocultural indicators in ways that supported evolutionary theories of romantic attachment and basic human mating strategies.

These results can contribute towards the development of a test battery for South African children that can be used to assess and improve their school performance.

Career development research and practice in South Africa are largely informed by the ideology of self-contained individualism that ignores the social and cultural forces impinging on the process. We argue that hermeneutic and dialogical approaches, in emphasising that development results from exposure to various social and cultural perspectives or voices, provide a better theoretical framework for understanding career development. A narrativebased approach to career development is introduced, followed by examples. Finally, we argue that career development should be reconceptualised to take into account individuals' attempts to navigate their lives in a world that is increasingly characterised by unpredictable changes and uncertainties.*Towhom correspondence should be addressed This paper examines the assumptions underlying most career research and practice in South Africa. In particular, we argue that the self-contained individualism that permeates most of mainstream social science research is inappropriate. In doing psychological research, it is important to take into account the indigenous psychologies that inform people's understanding of themselves, their social context, and the world. We argue that hermeneutic and dialogical approaches provide us with an appropriate theoretical framework and research methodology for exploring the process of career development in diverse cultural settings. We begin with an overview of the meaning of personhood and the philosophical assumptions that are implicitly contained in theories of career development. Having introduced the basic tenets of hermeneutics and dialogism, we provide a brief overview of our narrative-based research methodology, followed by examples from our ongoing research. We conclude with a call to reconceptualise career development as a process involving an ongoing negotiation of selves in a world characterised by rapid changes and uncertainties.

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