Validation of the Big Five Personality Scale for Ethiopian university students: exploring the psychometric properties of the Amharic version

Abstract

A growing body of research indicates that the big five personality scale is the most widely used tool for assessing personality traits. Translating and validating this scale in different languages is important to understand personality across diverse cultures. However, there is a lack of a reliable tool to measure big five personality in the Ethiopian context. The overarching purpose of this study was to develop and validate a psychometrically robust Amharic version of the Big Five personality scale that is culturally appropriate for the Ethiopian context. This study employed a cross-sectional survey design to gather data from 476 university students (Female = 232 and Male = 244) who were randomly selected from Ambo University. To analyse the data, the entire sample was divided randomly into two equal-sized groups for exploratory factor analysis (EFA, N = 238) and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA, N = 238). The findings from both EFA and CFA provided strong support for a Big Five Personality model (openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism) that displayed significant correlations. Furthermore, the Amharic version of the scale demonstrated improved compatibility with the collected data, exhibiting excellent psychometric properties in terms of content validity and construct validity and satisfactory internal consistency. In general, the findings suggest that the Amharic version of the Big Five Personality Scale has the potential to be effectively utilized within the Amharic-speaking communities in Ethiopia. Thus, the Amharic version of the scale can be considered as a viable option for assessing personality traits in the specific cultural and linguistic context of Ethiopia.