Mini-Markers: A Brief Version of Goldberg's Unipolar Big-Five Markers

Abstract Goldberg (1992) developed a robust, set of 100 adjective markers for the Big-Five factor structure found in phenotypic personality description. Because an even briefer marker set might be advantageous under certain assessment conditions, the performance of these 100 markers in 12 data sets was scrutinized, leading to the selection of an optimally robust subset of only 40 adjectives. This "Mini-Marker" subset demonstrated unusually impressive features for an abbreviated inventory, consisting of five scales that show, in comparison to the original scales, less use of difficult items, lower interscale correlations, and somewhat higher mean inter-item correlations; alpha reliabilities are somewhat lower. A format for administering this briefer inventory is appended.