What is the BFI-2 (Big Five Inventory-2)?

What is the BFI-2?

The BFI-2 is a personality questionnaire built to measure the five broad dimensions researchers call the Big Five: Extraversion, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, Negative Emotionality (often called Neuroticism elsewhere), and Open-Mindedness. It asks a series of short statements, such as "Is talkative" or "Tends to be organised", and you rate how accurately each one describes you. Its development paper reports the reliability of the scales, their structure, and evidence that the facets predict outcomes the domain scores alone do not (Soto & John, 2017).

What sets it apart from a plain domain-level Big Five test is the layer underneath. Each of the five domains is broken into three facets, for 15 in total, so instead of one Conscientiousness number you get separate readings for the narrower strands that make it up. A hierarchical model like this lets a researcher work at whichever level of detail a question needs, from the broad domain down to a specific facet.

Where did the BFI-2 come from?

The BFI-2 is a revision of the original Big Five Inventory, a widely used questionnaire described in the standard handbook chapter on the Big Five taxonomy (John & Srivastava, 1999). That original BFI measured the five domains but had no facet structure built into it. The BFI-2 was written to keep the same short, plain-language style while adding facets underneath each domain, and its authors present it as an advance over the original instrument, with the facets adding predictive power beyond the domain scores alone (Soto & John, 2017).

The lineage matters because it explains why the BFI-2's items read the way they do: short, third-person statements rather than long sentences, a style carried over from the original BFI and, further back, from the lexical tradition that produced the Big Five in the first place (Goldberg, 1993).

Who is the BFI-2 for?

The BFI-2 is built for research and teaching, which is why it turns up in so many published studies and university courses. The terms on which it can be used are set by its authors, so check those where you find it. What the instrument itself hands back is a set of scores rather than a packaged product, so a site offering it online has usually built its own report and its own reference sample around the published items.

If your aim is a set of scientifically grounded Big Five and facet scores, and you are comfortable reading the results yourself, the BFI-2 is a reasonable place to look. If what you want is a full report with a written explanation of what your scores mean, that is a different kind of product, and worth knowing the difference before you go looking for one.

Why do the facets matter, and how does the BFI-2 compare with very short Big Five measures?

A domain score is an average of everything beneath it, which means two people can land on the same Conscientiousness score for different reasons: one from being highly organised but only moderately disciplined, the other the other way round. Facets separate those strands out. The BFI-2's 15 facets, three per domain, are there because the facet scores predict some outcomes that the domain score misses, on top of what the domain already explains (Soto & John, 2017).

The cost of skipping facets, and of using very short measures generally, has been studied directly. Very abbreviated Big Five measures, particularly single-item ones, can lead researchers to understate how much personality actually matters and to overstate the importance of other explanations, while a scale only slightly longer improves the picture substantially for very little extra time from the person answering (Credé et al., 2012). Very short Big Five scales exist, some with as few as one item per trait, and they have a real use: when a study has no room for a full personality inventory because personality is not the main thing being studied. What they trade away is precision and facet detail.

The BFI-2 sits at a middle length: long enough to support 15 separate facet scores with several items each, short enough to complete in one sitting. That is a deliberate trade-off between the bandwidth a longer instrument like the NEO PI-R offers and the brevity a two-minute screener offers, and it is the reason the BFI-2 turns up so often in studies that need real facet detail without a 300-item form. Each domain is measured by several statements spread across its three facets, not by one or two items standing in for the whole thing.

How does the BFI-2 compare with the IPIP-NEO?

The IPIP-NEO is a different family of instrument, built from a large set of personality items placed in the public domain so anyone can build and publish scales from them without a licence (Goldberg et al., 2006). Its 120-item version was developed as a shorter alternative to a 300-item original, measuring all 30 NEO facets with four items each and reproducing the factor structure of the NEO PI-R rather than the BFI (Johnson, 2014). Where the BFI-2 gives three facets per domain, the IPIP-NEO-120 gives six; a full comparison of the two, and of Wellington, is worth reading if you are choosing between them.

How does Wellington measure this?

Wellington is a science-based personality assessment from Therabot Labs LLC. It measures personality as continuous traits, built on the Big Five and HEXACO models, and writes the results back as a personal report rather than a type.

The free Snapshot asks 60 questions, covering the six dimensions Wellington reports: the Big Five and Honesty-Humility. The Wellington Membership adds a further 336 questions to reach 90 traits, including every one of Wellington's facets beneath the six dimensions, 51 in total, along the same idea the BFI-2 uses: a broad dimension broken into narrower parts, then a short weekly module toward all 255 traits across eight domains.

Every trait is reported as a percentile against the reference sample. The three bands (Quiet below the 30th percentile, Balanced to the 70th, High above) and the Portrait names exist to make the result easier to talk about; the percentile is the measurement, and it is always shown alongside. Those norms are provisional while the norming sample is completed. Wellington is a wellness tool for reflection, not a medical or psychological diagnosis, and it does not replace care from a qualified professional.

Questions people ask

Is the BFI-2 free to take?

The versions you meet online are usually free to complete, but the terms on which the instrument itself may be used are set by its authors, so check those where you find it. It appears in a great many published studies and university courses, and a site that hosts the items has generally built its own report, its own wording and its own reference sample around them.

How long is the BFI-2?

Longer than a screener and far shorter than a 300-item inventory: it is built to be finished in one sitting while still supporting 15 facet scores as well as the five domains (Soto & John, 2017). The number of statements depends on which form you are given, so count the items in front of you rather than assuming a figure you read elsewhere.

Is the BFI-2 the same as the original BFI?

No. The BFI-2 is a revision of the original Big Five Inventory (John & Srivastava, 1999). It keeps the same short, plain-language style but adds a facet structure, 15 facets across the five domains, that the original instrument did not have.

Does the BFI-2 measure facets or just the five domains?

Both. Each domain score is itself an average of three facet scores, so a BFI-2 report can show the broad domain, such as Conscientiousness, and the three narrower facets beneath it, giving a more detailed picture than a domain-only test.

How is the BFI-2 different from the IPIP-NEO?

Both measure the Big Five with facets beneath each domain, but they come from different traditions. The BFI-2 has 15 facets, three per domain (Soto & John, 2017). The IPIP-NEO-120 follows the NEO tradition with 30 facets, six per domain, across 120 items drawn from a public-domain pool (Goldberg et al., 2006; Johnson, 2014).