Six-factor model of personality and psychometric properties of The HEXACO Personality inventory – Revised

According to the HEXACO six-factor personality model, the personality is best described by six dimensions. These are: Honesty-humility, Emotionality, Extraversion, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness and Openness to experience. The authors of the model – Michael C. Ashton and Kibeom Lee, refer to the possibility of a more differentiated depiction of personality structure and provide an alternative to other respected factorial models. While the sixfactor model is commonly used in Canada and in the USA, in the Czech Republic it is not. In the research, we strived to determine the basic parameters of the Czech version of the six-dimension method. Furthermore, we aimed to validate the HEXACO model structure using exploratory factor analysis. * Korespondenční autor: Mgr. Tereza Záškodná. Katedra psychologie, Filozofická fakulta UP, Vodární 6, 771 80 Olomouc E-mail: tereza.zaskodna@upol.cz, tereza.zaskodna@osu.cz 32 T. Záškodná, D. Dostál / Psychologie a její kontexty 7 (2), 2016, 31-42 The participants consisted of 760 college students (221 males and 539 females) from more than 20 universities of the Czech Republic (e.g. Charles University in Prague, Masaryk University, Palacký University in Olomouc). The 100-item Personality Inventory HEXACOPI-R was used for measurement. It is self-report instrument that assesses the six major dimensions of personality. The internal-consistency reliabilities (Cronbach’s alpha) for the HEXACO-PI-R scales were high. The reliabilities ranged from . 76 (Openness to Experience) to . 88 (Extraversion) at the factor level. The 24 facet scales in the HEXACO-PI-R were submitted to a principal axis factor analysis. When these factors were rotated to a Varimax solution, a simple factor structure emerged (the sizes of the corresponding factor loading were big, ranging from .46 to .73). The mutual correlations among the six factor-level scales were low. The highest correlation (r = .28) was found between Honesty-Humility and Agreeableness. Discriminant validity was established. While the six dimensions of the HEXACO model showed high levels of the Cronbach’s alpha, some of the facet-level scales were low. Particularly the facet-levels of Openness to Experience seem a little problematic; alpha ranges from . 40 (Unconventionality) to . 62 (Aesthetic appreciation). But in general, Openness to Experience is the most controversial dimension in terms of the content interpretation. Ongoing work with the Czech translation of the items covered by this dimension is needed. To compare the two structures, the Czech and the original Canadian, we used the congruence calculation. It ranges from . 93 (Honesty-Humility, Emotionality) to . 96 (Conscientiousness). The Canadian and Czech factor structure show a high level of correspondence. Further work with the model should consider the critical comments concerning for example the inhomogeneous identification of the Honesty-Humility factor in different languages (De Raad et al., 2010). The Czech version of 100-item HEXACO-PI-R seems to be usable in our socio-culture conditions regarding its high Cronbach’s alpha, the validated six-factor model structure and the established discriminant validity.