1 2 Original Article 3 4 Further Validity of the Japanese 5 Version of the Ten Item Personality 6 Inventory (TIPI-J) 7 Cross-Language Evidence for Content Validity 8 Atsushi Oshio, 1 Shingo Abe, 2 Pino Cutrone, 3 and Samuel D. Gosling 4 9 1 Faculty of Letters, Arts and Sciences, Waseda University, Tokyo, Japan, 2 Baika Women’s University, 10 Osaka, Japan, 3 Nagasaki University, Japan, 4 Department of Psychology, University of Texas, 11 Austin, TX, USA 12 Abstract. The Ten Item Personality Inventory (TIPI; Gosling, Rentfrow, & Swann, 2003) is a widely used very brief measure of the Big Five 13 personality dimensions. Oshio, Abe, and Cutrone (2012) have developed a Japanese version of the TIPI (TIPI-J), which demonstrated 14 acceptable levels of reliability and validity. Until now, all studies examining the validity of the TIPI-J have been conducted in the Japanese 15 language; this reliance on a single language raises concerns about the instrument’s content validity because the instrument could demonstrate 16 reliability (e.g., retest) and some forms of validity (e.g., convergent) but still not capture the full range of the dimensions as originally 17 conceptualized in English. Therefore, to test the content validity of the Japanese TIPI with respect to the original Big Five formulation, we 18 examine the convergence between scores on the TIPI-J and scores on the English-language Big Five Inventory (i.e., the BFI-E), an instrument 19 specifically designed to optimize Big Five content coverage. Two-hundred and twenty-eight Japanese undergraduate students, who were all 20 learning English, completed the two instruments. The results of correlation analyses and structural equation modeling demonstrate the theorized 21 congruence between the TIPI-J and the BFI-E, supporting the content validity of the TIPI-J. 22 Keywords: Ten Item Personality Inventory, Big Five personality dimensions, personality assessment, cross-language generalizability, 23 content validity 24 25 26 The Big Five or the Five Factor Model (FFM) is the most 27 widely accepted model describing human personality traits, 28 with good evidence supporting its cross-cultural generaliz- 29 ability (John, Naumann, & Soto, 2008). For example, the 30 factor structure of the Revised NEO Personality Inventory 31 (NEO-PI-R; Costa, & McCrae, 1992) – a widely used mea- 32 sure of the FFM – has demonstrated high levels of repro- 33 ducibility across almost of 50 cultures (McCrae, 34 Terracciano, & 78 Members of the Personality Profiles of 35 Cultures Project, 2005). Moreover, a twin study estimating 36 genetic and environmental factors from the NEO-PI-R 37 found cross-cultural congruence of the factors across 38 Canada, Germany, and Japan (Yamagata et al., 2006). 39 Most of the cross-cultural research on personality struc- 40 ture has been done using well-established long instruments. 41 However, as we shall discuss below, there are many 42 research and practical applications for which very brief 43 instruments are needed. To meet this need some very brief 44 instruments have been developed in an increasing numbers 45 of languages. One such instrument is the TIPI-J, a very 46 brief measure of the Big Five in Japanese (Oshio, Abe, & 47 Cutrone, 2012). However, translated instruments are sus- 48 ceptible to changing their content coverage in the process 49 of being translated from one language to another. There- 50 fore, the current study evaluates the extent to which the 51 TIPI-J retains the content coverage of the Big Five dimen- 52 sions as originally formulated in the English language. 53 To provide context for the design and analyses, we next 54 briefly review past work on the Big Five and recent 55 attempts to develop instruments to measure the Big Five 56 traits in Japan. 57 Japanese Studies of the Big Five 58 Personality Structure 59 Historically, Aoki’s (1971a, 1971b, 1972, 1976) pioneering 60 works marked the beginning of the lexical and factorial 61 approach to the exploration of personality structure in 62 Japan. Aoki (1971a) collected approximately 6,000 63 personality-related words from a Japanese dictionary and 64 classified them into categories corresponding to those 65 devised by Allport and Odbert (1936). Though a series of 66 steps involving rational categorizations and empirical factor Journal of Individual Differences 2014 DOI: 10.1027/1614-0001/a000145 Ó 2014 Hogrefe Publishing uncorrected proof - not for distribution