Elaboração e validação de escala de diferencial semântico para avaliação de personalidade

The structure offered by the Five-Factor Model (FFM) of personality traits presents a theoretical basis that allows the embedding of new empirical findings, and provides a clear vision of the domain of personality traits and of the relationships between personality factors. The objectives of the present thesis were: (1) to ascertain how the FFM has been supported by empirical studies, and to verify the applicability of the model; (2) to construct a reduced instrument assessing the big five personality factors using a semantic differential scale and to obtain evidence of its score validity and score reliability, and (3) to obtain evidence of the convergent validity of the newly constructed instrument. To attain the objectives of the thesis four manuscripts were elaborated: one theoretical, one technical and two empirical. The purpose of the first manuscript was to gain a comprehensive understanding of the FFM and the way in which the model is being applied. This manuscript describes a revision of Brazilian and international scientific literature that was realized to obtain an inventory of the scientific production in the area of personality evaluation. The revision included 156 international and 27 Brazilian scientific articles. The second manuscript describes the development stages of a reduced instrument using a semantic differential scale that was constructed to assess the big five personality factors. The objective of the third manuscript was to verify evidence of the score validity and score reliability of the newly constructed instrument named ER5FP – the Reduced Scale of the Big Five Personality Factors. Therefore, the instrument was administered to 365 university students. In the fourth manuscript data is presented on the convergent validity of ER5FP: the scale was administered to 554 participants together with the reduced version of the Big Five Inventory (IGFP-5R). The results reported in the last two manuscripts indicated that positive evidence of the score validity and the score reliability of the ER5FP was obtained, especially in relation to the factors Extraversion, Neuroticism and Openness to Experience. The evidence of score validity found for the ER5FP is comparable with the evidence obtained for other instruments assessing the big five personality factors.