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Mini-IPIP

Mini-IPIP
psychologysocial sciencesPublic domain

Permission: Public domain. Free to use, reproduce and adapt without asking permission. Cite the original publication.

A 20-item short measure of the Big Five personality factors (four items each), drawn from the public-domain International Personality Item Pool.

Items
20
Response format
5-point Likert
Version
1.0
Subscales
5

Ready-to-cite methods sentence

Personality was measured with the Mini-IPIP (Donnellan et al., 2006), a public-domain 20-item Big Five measure whose five 4-item factors showed acceptable internal consistency (α ≈ .68–.82).

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Reliability & validation

Validation population
Undergraduate samples across five studies (Donnellan et al., 2006)
Cronbach's α
0.68–0.82

Subscales

ExtraversionAgreeablenessConscientiousnessNeuroticismIntellect/Imagination

Response anchors

Very inaccurate · Moderately inaccurate · Neither accurate nor inaccurate · Moderately accurate · Very accurate

Known limitations

Four items per factor trade breadth for brevity; factor reliabilities (especially neuroticism and conscientiousness) are lower than longer Big Five measures.

Original citation

Donnellan, M. B., Oswald, F. L., Baird, B. M., & Lucas, R. E. (2006). The Mini-IPIP scales: Tiny-yet-effective measures of the Big Five factors of personality. Psychological Assessment, 18(2), 192-203.

https://doi.org/10.1037/1040-3590.18.2.192

Questions researchers ask

What does the Mini-IPIP measure?

A 20-item short measure of the Big Five personality factors (four items each), drawn from the public-domain International Personality Item Pool.

How many items does the Mini-IPIP have?

The Mini-IPIP (Mini-IPIP) has 20 items across 5 subscales: Extraversion, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, Neuroticism, Intellect/Imagination.

Is the Mini-IPIP free to use?

The Mini-IPIP is in the public domain: free to use, reproduce and adapt without seeking permission. Cite the original source.

Is the Mini-IPIP reliable?

Validation studies report Cronbach's α of 0.68–0.82. See the reliability section for the population studied and full statistics.

Who developed the Mini-IPIP, and how do I cite it?

Donnellan, M. B., Oswald, F. L., Baird, B. M., & Lucas, R. E. (2006). The Mini-IPIP scales: Tiny-yet-effective measures of the Big Five factors of personality. Psychological Assessment, 18(2), 192-203. https://doi.org/10.1037/1040-3590.18.2.192

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Related scales

BFI-44Big Five InventoryBFI-2Big Five Inventory-2HEXACO-60HEXACO-60TIPITen-Item Personality InventoryBSCSBrief Self-Control ScaleGrit-SShort Grit Scale

Library entry verified September 2026. Metadata is provided for reference. Questionnaires are built in Folio Surveyor, subject to each instrument's licensing, and can be taken to Qualtrics, Google Forms or Microsoft Forms, with their CSV responses brought back for scoring.