information
Article
New Approach of Measuring Human Personality Traits Using
Ontology-Based Model from Social Media Data
Andry Alamsyah * , Nidya Dudija and Sri Widiyanesti
Citation: Alamsyah, A.; Dudija, N.;
Widiyanesti, S. New Approach of
Measuring Human Personality Traits
Using Ontology-Based Model from
Social Media Data. Information 2021,
12, 413. https://doi.org/10.3390/
info12100413
Academic Editor: Arkaitz Zubiaga
Received: 8 September 2021
Accepted: 4 October 2021
Published: 8 October 2021
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School of Economics and Business, Telkom University, Bandung 40257, Indonesia;
nidyadudija@telkomuniversity.ac.id (N.D.); widiyanesti@telkomuniversity.ac.id (S.W.)
* Correspondence: andrya@telkomuniversity.ac.id
Abstract: Human online activities leave digital traces that provide a perfect opportunity to under-
stand their behavior better. Social media is an excellent place to spark conversations or state opinions.
Thus, it generates large-scale textual data. In this paper, we harness those data to support the effort
of personality measurement. Our first contribution is to develop the Big Five personality trait-based
model to detect human personalities from their textual data in the Indonesian language. The model
uses an ontology approach instead of the more famous machine learning model. The former better
captures the meaning and intention of phrases and words in the domain of human personality. The
legacy and more thorough ways to assess nature are by doing interviews or by giving questionnaires.
Still, there are many real-life applications where we need to possess an alternative method, which is
cheaper and faster than the legacy methodology to select individuals based on their personality. The
second contribution is to support the model implementation by building a personality measurement
platform. We use two distinct features for the model: an n-gram sorting algorithm to parse the textual
data and a crowdsourcing mechanism that facilitates public involvement contributing to the ontology
corpus addition and filtering.
Keywords: personality measurement model; social media; ontology model; big five personality trait
1. Introduction
The Big Five Inventory (BFI) is formulated as a concise instrument to represent human
personality [1]. Although it sounds radical to propose around 44 short questions answered
in only 5 min response time, it is achievable to measure the Big Five dimensions of per-
sonality traits. In the 1990s, most instruments were much longer [2]; even the short form
of the NEO-PI-R [3] has 60 questions. Today, there is a growing demand for super-short
measures since the availability of large-scale data pushes toward a trend to shorter per-
sonality instruments. Many researchers that implement the BFI demand a more concise
version to support faster and real-time measurement results. Several examples of the
trend toward minimal measurement are the single-item self-esteem scale [4], single-item
ability ratings [5], and 10-item measure of the Big Five [6,7]. Many super-short instruments
produce a good psychometric characteristics result, implying that a BFI short version is
feasible [8].
Personality measurement is commonly attainable in many ways, such as through
interviews and questionnaires [9]. The self-administered questionnaire is widely utilized
for personality measurement inside the psychological research domain [10]. This method
is in vast utilization because the questionnaire shows performance with adequate relia-
bility and is highly effective in measuring personality for the number of individuals [11].
Nevertheless, this method is usually challenged by a falsely answering respondent that
causing an inaccurate result. On the other hand, an interview is another way to perform a
personality measurement with the benefits of using sophisticated instruments to hinder
misunderstandings [12]. Self-administered interviews generally provide better privacy
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