Comparability of personality facets between men and women: A test of measurement invariance in IPIP-NEO facets in 49 countries

Abstract

Identifying whether men and women differ in their personalities, and whether such differences are robust across populations, requires researchers to consider measurement invariance (MI) when comparing between groups. Here, we examined thirty facets of the 120-item IPIP-NEO personality measure between genders (49 countries, N = 831,849). Confirmatory factor analyses (CFAs) revealed that only about half of the facets exhibited robust factor structure within each gender. Based on multi-group CFAs, some facets consistently exhibited scalar MI between the genders in the majority of countries, whereas others reached this MI level in few, or zero, countries. These findings suggest that caution is warranted when comparing personality between genders in cross-cultural datasets and that such comparisons might be more appropriate for some facets than others.