Identification and measurement of a more comprehensive set of person-descriptive trait markers from the English lexicon

We suggest some refinements to earlier approaches to generating “comprehensive” personality inventories and address some methodological concerns that accompany their use. By applying cluster analysis to Saucier’s (1997) list of the 504 most frequently used trait adjectives, we identified 61 clusters that can be used to represent the lower-order structure of individual differences found in the lexicon. We show that very short measures of these clusters have acceptable reliabilities, that single items can regularly be identified that correlate with standard measures of Big Five dimensions above .70, and finally, using gender and life satisfaction as examples, illustrate how comprehensive inventories can reveal relationships between personality and variables of interest that are masked by the use of Big Five scales alone.