The Five-Factor Model (FFM) is one of the most commonly examined constructs of personality across cultures in recent times. However, there is a lacuna of evidence for the suitability of FFM measures for Indian adolescent school students below the age of 17 years. We carried out two independent studies for the psychometric evaluation of the measures BFI-10 and NEO-FFI-3 on Indian adolescent school students. Both studies examined two socio-culturally distinct linguistic groups of secondary and senior secondary school students with a total sample of N = 1117 students. There was very limited support for a five-factor solution in both cases. Model fit was poor when applying FFM measures to our samples, whether applying confirmatory factor analysis or exploratory structural equation models. The results provide evidence against using adult personality measures with adolescents without separate psychometric validation and applying the Western age norms to Indian students without considering that the process of personality consolidation during adolescence may not be identical across cultures.

Social and economic factors are commonly examined as contextual variables that predict academic achievement, apart from the educational environment. In India, a major segment of the socioeconomic status of students comprises the governmental stratification of population into three broad classes, viz., scheduled castes/tribes (SC-ST), other backward classes (OBC) and general class (GC). In this study, we examined the association of these governmental classes with the academic performance of Indian adolescents who enjoy the same school environment. Psychological measures of self-esteem and life satisfaction as well as demographic variables such as gender, age and family income were also examined as covariates. The study was conducted on a convenient sample of 858 students of X and XI grades. Based on multilevel regression models, the relationship between governmental classes and academic performance was significantly positive, wherein higher level of class predicted better academic performance. The study highlighted that students from the same school environment performed differently based on their social status and that this difference was not a function of their family income, thus pointing to potential role of non-economic aspects of the governmental stratification including caste affiliation. The findings indicate the need for further examining as well as planning to improve the aspects of students’ social status that impact academic performance.

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