4Elements Inventory : modern psychometrics applied to an ancient metaphor of the big four personality
Abstrakt
Two and a half thousand years old metaphor of four elements (fire, water, earth, and air) used to explain variety and diversity of (human) nature influenced the natural language describing human behavior. We wondered to what extent the characteristics with which the four elements were tied would be reliable and valid by using the modern psychometric approach and methods.
More than ten years ago, based on qualitative and quantitative research, we created a 100-item four-factor 4Elements Inventory (4EI) and introduced this method on ICP 2008 in Berlin. In the following years, we standardized this test and analyze its psychometric properties in the Czech, American and Spanish populations.
In this paper, we would like to present the psychometric qualities of the inventory assessed on the sample of the general population (N = 13 298, 58.5% females, average age 36.7, SD = 9.7) and summarize all validity studies we have gathered during the years of 4EI development. The construct validity of 4EI was supported in the various correlation studies with other widely used and well-known personality assessment tools (e.g.
NEO-PI-R, Cloninger's TCI-R, HPI, HDS, MBTI, Zuckerman). We measured the reliability of 4EI as test-retest, internal consistency, and split-half.
All coefficients ranged from 0.77 to 0.89. We applied an IRT approach for item analysis and confirmation of the unidimensionality of each scale and the four-factor structure of the inventory.
We also used ESEM to study the internal structure of the 4EI (CFI = 0.932, TLI = 0.932, RMSEA = 0.031, SRMR = 0.032). As a conclusion, 4Elements Inventory is a psychometrically sound, reliable, and valid four-factor personality assessment with the psychometric qualities comparable with many other well-known and widely used personality tests that are considered to be the gold standards of the psychodiagnostics.