Ten-Item Personality Inventory (TIPI)
A very brief Big Five measure whose brevity comes with a documented precision tradeoff.
Questionnaire The format describes how observations are obtained, not an evidence rating.
What it measures
Five broad personality dimensions with two items per dimension.
What people do
Respondents rate ten short trait-pair descriptions on a 7-point scale from 1 (Disagree strongly) to 7 (Agree strongly). Each of the five domains is represented by one positively keyed item and one contrait item. It is designed for settings where a longer personality inventory is impractical.
What the scores mean
Reverse-key the five contrait items (one in each two-item domain pair, recoded as 8 minus the raw response), then average each two-item pair to produce five domain scores from 1 to 7. Very short, deliberately broad scales should not be judged from internal consistency alone; inspect retest stability and convergence too.
This explains the logic of a score. It does not supply a test form, individual result or administration manual.
Development and versions
Samuel Gosling, Peter Rentfrow and William Swann introduced the measure in 2003.
Evidence: (Gosling Lab: Ten Item Personality Measure, n.d.); (Spielman et al., 2020)
Reliability and validity evidence
The developers report convergence with longer inventories and self/observer reports, plus retest evidence, while describing weaker psychometric performance than standard multi-item measures. These findings support a compromise, not equality with a detailed inventory.
Evidence belongs to a version, sample and interpretation. Read the source notes for what was actually inspected.
Evidence: (Gosling Lab: Ten Item Personality Measure, n.d.); (Spielman et al., 2020)
Where it is used
A background personality covariate in a time-limited survey is a different use from precise facet assessment.
Limits and common misreadings
- Two items cannot represent all facets of a domain.
- Translation availability does not establish equivalence.
- Do not use a brief trait score as a hiring or clinical verdict.
Read an example
Original teaching example
In an original teaching scenario, a ten-minute survey has room for a broad trait covariate but not a detailed personality question. The investigator chooses a brief measure and states the precision sacrificed instead of claiming the same information in fewer items.
Constructed for learning; this is not a result from the instrument’s validation study.
Access and permission
The developer page explicitly permits use for any purpose. Preserve attribution and check any translation’s own documentation.
Textbook connection
Related contextPsychology 2e: 11.9 Personality Assessment
Conceptual context; the instrument-specific sources in this profile provide the primary evidence.
Related measures
Read a measure critically · Explore score examples · Review research methods
Sources and inspection notes
Checked October 22, 2026. An inspection date is not a publication date. Publisher information is not presented as independent validation; abstract-only and indexed-excerpt access are identified below.
- Gosling lab: Ten item personality measure. (n.d.). https://gosling.psy.utexas.edu/scales-weve-developed/ten-item-personality-measure-tipi/Developer page: description, abstract, scoring and permission
Includes the 2003 Gosling, Rentfrow and Swann reference, the 1-to-7 response scale, reverse-scoring of five contrait items and the developers’ explicit brevity tradeoff. Translation listings are not independent validation.
- Spielman, R. M., Jenkins, W. J., & Lovett, M. D. (2020). Psychology 2e. OpenStax. https://openstax.org/books/psychology-2e/pages/11-9-personality-assessmentTextbook: conceptual context
Conceptual context; the instrument-specific sources in this profile provide the primary evidence.