Adapting the BFI-2 Around the World – Coordinated Translation and Validation in Five Languages and Cultural Contexts

Abstract

In the course of the PIAAC international pilot studies conducted in 2016 and 2017, the Big Five Inventory-2 (BFI-2; Soto & John, 2017 ) was translated into and validated in five languages (French, German, Polish, Spanish, and Japanese). Translation was coordinated and conducted centrally following the same state-of-the-art procedures. The performance and comparability of the resulting BFI-2 versions were investigated in parallel in a comprehensive international online study based on quota samples in each country. In this paper, we present the different language versions of the BFI-2 and our investigation of their psychometric properties (reliability, structural, and criterion-related validity) as well as their measurement invariance. Overall, the results reveal high comparability of the psychometric properties across all six versions of the BFI-2 and pairwise between the five adaptations and the English-language original.