The Revised NEO Personality Inventory (NEO PI-R) is a personality inventory that assesses an individual on five dimensions of personality. These are the same dimensions found in the Big Five personality traits. These traits are openness to experience, conscientiousness, extraversion (-introversion), agreeableness, and neuroticism. In addition, the NEO PI-R also reports on six subcategories of each Big Five personality trait (called facets).

Historically, development of the Revised NEO PI-R began in 1978 when Paul Costa and Robert McCrae published a personality inventory. The researchers later published three updated versions of their personality inventory in 1985, 1992, and 2005. These were called the NEO PI (Neuroticism, Extraversion, Openness Personality Inventory), NEO PI-R (or Revised NEO PI), and NEO PI-3, respectively. The revised inventories feature updated vocabulary that could be understood by adults of any education level, as well as children.

The inventories have both longer and shorter versions, with the full NEO PI-R consisting of 240 items and providing detailed facet scores. By contrast, the shorter NEO-FFI (NEO Five-Factor Inventory) comprised 60 items (12 per trait). The test was originally developed for use with adult men and women without overt psychopathology. It has also been found to be valid for use with children.

Personality dimensions A table of the personality dimensions measured by the NEO PI-R, including facets, is as follows:

Neuroticism Extraversion Openness to experience Agreeableness Conscientiousness Anxiety Warmth Fantasy/ Imagination/ Trust (in Others) Competence/ Self-efficacy/ Hostility/ Anger/ Gregariousness Aesthetics/ Artistic Interest/ Straightforwardness/ Morality/ Order(liness)/ Organizing Depression Assertiveness Feelings/ Emotionality Altruism Dutifulness/ Sense of Duty/Obligation Self-consciousness Activity (Level)/ Lively Temperament Actions/ Adventurousness/Exploration Compliance/ Cooperation Achievement Striving Impulsiveness/ Immoderation Excitement Seeking Ideas/ Intellectual Interest/Curiosity Modesty Self-Discipline/ Willpower Vulnerability to Stress/ Fear/Learned helplessness Positive Emotion/ Cheerfulness/Vivacity Values/ Psychological liberalism/Tolerance to ambiguity Tendermindedness/ Sympathy Deliberation/ Cautiousness

Forms and administration In the most recent publication, there are two forms for the NEO, self-report (form S) and observer-report (form R) versions. Both forms consist of 240 items (descriptions of behavior) answered on a five-point Likert scale. Finally, there is a 60-item inventory, the NEO FFI. There are paper and computer versions of both forms.

The manual reports that administration of the full version should take between 30 and 40 minutes. Costa and McCrae reported that an individual should not be evaluated if more than 40 items are missing. They also state that despite the fact that the assessment is "balanced" to control for the effects of acquiescence and nay-saying, that if more than 150 responses, or fewer than 50 responses, are "agree" or "strongly agree", the results should be interpreted with caution.

Scores can be reported to most test-takers on "Your NEO Summary", which provides a brief explanation of the assessment, and gives the individuals domain levels and a strengths-based description of three levels (high, medium, and low) in each domain. For example, low N reads "Secure, hardy, and generally relaxed even under stressful conditions," whereas high N reads "Sensitive, emotional, and prone to experience feelings that are upsetting." For profile interpretation, facet and domain scores are reported in T scores and are recorded visually as compared to the appropriate norming group.

Reliability The internal consistency of the NEO scales was assessed on 1,539 individuals.McCrae, R. R., & Costa, P. T., Jr., (2010). NEO Inventories: Professional manual. Lutz, FL: Psychological Assessment Resources, Inc. The internal consistency of the NEO PI-R was high, at: N = .92, E = .89, O = .87, A = .86, C = .90. The internal consistency of the facet scales ranged from .56 to .81. The internal consistency of the NEO PI-3 was consistent with that of the NEO PI-R, with α ranging from .89 to .93 for the five domains. Internal consistency coefficient from the facets, with each facet scale comprising fewer items than each of the Big Five scales, were necessarily smaller, ranging from .54 to .83.

For the NEO FFI (the 60 item domain only version) the internal consistencies reported in the manual were: N = .79, E = .79, O = .80, A = .75, C = .83. In the literature, the NEO FFI is used more often, with investigators using the NEO PI-R usually using the items from just the domains they are interested in. Sherry et al. (2007) found internal consistencies for the FFI to be as follows: N = .85, E = .80, O = .68, A = .75, C = .83.

The NEO has been translated into many languages. The internal consistency coefficients of the domain scores of a translation of the NEO that has been used in the Philippines are satisfactory. The alphas for the domain scores range from .78 to .90, with facet alphas having a median of .61. Observer-ratings NEO PI-R data from 49 cultures was used as criterion in a recent study which tested whether individuals' perceptions of the "national character" of a culture accurately reflected the personality of the members of that culture (it did not).

The test-retest reliability of the NEO PI-R has also been found to be satisfactory. The test-retest reliability of an early version of the NEO after 3 months was: N = .87, E = .91, O = .86. The test-retest reliability for over 6 years, as reported in the NEO PI-R manual, was the following: N = .83, E = .82, O = .83, A = .63, C = .79. Costa and McCrae pointed out that these findings not only demonstrate good reliability of the domain scores, but also their stability (among individuals over the age of 30). Scores measured six years apart varied only marginally more than scores measured a few months apart.Costa, P. T., Jr., & McCrae, R. R. (1992). NEO PI-R professional manual. Odessa, FL: Psychological Assessment Resources, Inc.

The psychometric properties of NEO PI-R scales have been found to generalize across ages, cultures, and methods of measurement.

Effect of age Although individual differences (rank-order) tend to be relatively stable in adulthood, there are maturational changes in personality that are common to most people (mean-level changes). Most cross-sectional and longitudinal studies suggest that neuroticism, extraversion, and openness tend to decline, whereas agreeableness and conscientiousness tend to increase during adulthood. A meta-analysis of 92 personality studies that used several different inventories (among them NEO PI-R) found that social dominance, conscientiousness, and emotional stability increased with age, especially in the age span of 20 to 40.

Validity Costa and McCrae reported in the NEO manual research findings regarding the convergent and discriminant validity of the inventory. Examples of these findings include the following: For the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, Introversion is correlated with the NEO facet Warmth at −0.61, and with the NEO facet Gregariousness at −0.59. Intuition is correlated with the NEO facet Fantasy at 0.43 and with the NEO facet Aesthetics at 0.56. Feeling is correlated with the NEO facet Tender-mindedness at 0.39. For the Self-Directed Search (a personality inventory developed by John L. Holland for careers work), Artistic is correlated with the NEO facet Aesthetic at 0.56, Investigative is correlated with the NEO facet Ideas at 0.43, and Social is correlated with the NEO facet Tender-mindedness at 0.36.

A number of studies evaluated the criterion validity of the NEO. For example, Conard (2005) found that Conscientiousness significantly predicted the GPA of college students, over and above using SAT scores alone. In a study conducted in Seville, Spain, Cano-Garcia and his colleagues (2005) found that, using a Spanish version of the inventory, dimensions of the NEO correlated with teacher burnout. Neuroticism was related to the "emotional exhaustion" dimension of burnout, and Agreeableness, with the "personal accomplishment" burnout dimension. Finally, Korukonda (2007) found that Neuroticism was positively related to computer anxiety; Openness and Agreeableness were negatively related to computer anxiety.

Translations The NEO-PI-R has been extensively used across cultures. Per the information on the Psychological Assessment Resources (PAR) website (PAR is the publisher of the NEO-PI-R), the NEO-PI-R has been translated into 40 languages. These languages are Afrikaans, Albanian, Arabic, Bulgarian, Chinese, Croatian, Estonian, Filipino, Finnish, Hebrew, Hindi, Hmong, Hungarian, Icelandic, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Kannada, Korean, Latvian, Lithuanian, Malay, Marathi, Persian, Peruvian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Slovene, Sotho, Spanish, Taiwanese, Thai, Tigrignan, Turkish, Urdu, Vietnamese, and Xhosa.

Critiques

Critical reviews of the NEO PI-R were published in the 12th edition of the Mental Measurements Yearbook (MMY). The NEO-Pi-R (which only measures 57% of the known trait variance in the normal personality sphere alone) has been severely criticized both in terms of its factor analytic/construct validity and its psychometric properties.Boyle, G.J., Stankov, L., & Cattell, R.B. (1995). Measurement and statistical models in the study of personality and intelligence. In D.H. Saklofske & M. Zeidner (Eds.), International Handbook of Personality and Intelligence (pp. 417-446). New York: Plenum. Boyle, G.J. (2008). Critique of Five-Factor Model (FFM). In G.J. Boyle, G. Matthews, & D.H. Saklofske (Eds.), The SAGE Handbook of Personality Theory and Assessment: Vol. 1 - Personality Theories and Models. Los Angeles, CA: Sage Publishers. Widiger criticized the NEO for not controlling for social desirability bias. Retrieved from Mental Measurements Yearbook database. He argued that test developers cannot assume participants will be honest, especially in settings where it benefits people to present themselves in a better light (e.g., forensic or personnel settings). Ben-Porath and Waller pointed out that the NEO Inventories could be improved with the addition of controls for dishonesty and social desirability.

Juni, in another review of the NEO PI-R for the MMY, praised the NEO PI-R for including both self- and other-report scales, making it easier for psychologists to corroborate information provided by a client or research participant. Juni criticized the NEO PI-R for its conceptualization using the Five Factor Model (FFM) of personality. Juni argued that the existence of the FFM was phenomenological and atheoretical, the model gaining popularity as a result of the influence of the authors (McCrae and Costa) in the psychological community. The NEO PI-R has also been criticized because of its market-oriented, proprietary nature.Murphy Paul, A. (2004). The cult of personality: How personality tests are leading us to miseducate our children, mismanage our companies, and misunderstand ourselves. New York: Simon and Schuster. In response to the expense involved in using proprietary personality inventories such as the NEO, other researchers have contributed to the development of the International Personality Item Pool (IPIP); IPIP items and scales are available free of charge.

NEO PI-R was also criticised for being possibly too complex to understand for less educated or less intelligent individuals.

Alternative versions