16 Personality Factors - Development

Development

In 1936 Gordon Allport and H.S. Odbert hypothesized that:

This statement has become known as the Lexical Hypothesis, which posits that if there is a word for a trait, it must be a real trait. Allport and Odbert utilized this hypothesis to identify personality traits by working through two of the most comprehensive dictionaries of the English language available at the time, and extracting 18,000 personality-describing words. From this gigantic list they extracted 4500 personality-describing adjectives which they considered to describe observable and relatively permanent traits.

The 16 Personality Factors were identified in 1946 by Raymond Cattell. He believed that in order to adequately map out personality, one had to utilize L-Data (life records or observation), Q data (information from questionnaires), and T-data (information from objective tests The development of the 16PF Questionnaire, although confusingly named, was an attempt to develop an adequate measure of T-data. Cattell used the emerging technology of computers to analyze the list of 4500 adjectives through the statistical technique of factor analysis, which seeks to identify constructs that underlie observed variables. He organized the list of adjectives into fewer than 200 items and asked subjects to rate people whom they knew on each of the adjectives on the list (an example of L-data because the information was gathered from observers). This allowed Cattell to narrow down to 35 terms. Ratings of the 35 terms were factor-analyzed, revealing a 12 factor solution. After the 35 terms were made into self-rating items Cattell found that there were 4 additional factors, which he believed consisted of information that could only be provided through self-rating. This process allowed the use of ratings by observers, questionnaires, and objective measurements of actual behavior. Together the original 12 factors and the 4 covert factors made up the original 16 primary personality factors. As the five factor theory gained traction and research on the 16 factors continued, subsequent analysis identified five factors underlying the 16 factors. Cattell called these global factors.

Personality research author Schuerger stated that:

Since its release in 1949, the 16PF Questionnaire has been revised four times: once in 1956, once in 1962, once in 1968, and the current version was developed in 1993. The test was also re-standardized in 2002, along with the development of forms for children and teenagers. Additionally, there is a shortened form available primarily for employee selection and the questionnaire has been adapted into more than 35 languages. The questionnaire has also been validated in a range of international cultures over time.