About the Cattell Personality Factor Questionnaire

The measure of personality used in the PAIR Project is Cattell's 16 Personality Factor questionnaire (affectionately nicknamed the 16PF). Cattell devised a technique whereby every possible aspect of personality would be included in the investigation with the aim of reducing this mass of non-selective material to more manageable proportions. He started with the English language of personality description and by doing this captured all significant dimensions of variation in human personality. From here he reduced the 18,000 words to a more manageable number by getting rid of synonyms. From there he ran factor analyses and found 16 relatively specific personality traits and 5 broader traits.

Cattell's 16PF scale was administered in the PAIR Project during the first interview when the respondents were newlyweds. The scale includes sixteen subscales (primary factors), 15 of which pertain to personality characteristics. Data regarding one of the factors, intelligence, was not used for the PAIR Project. From the first-order factors, we can derive five additional second-order factors: introversion/extroversion, anxiety, sensitivity/tough poise, independence, and control. Respondents' raw scores on each of these dimensions can be converted into standard scores called "sten scores" (the term comes from "standard ten"), which are distributed over 10 equal-interval standard score points from 1 through 10. Before proceeding to the next document, please:

Sample items from the questionnaire.

About the first-order factors.

About the second-order factors.

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Cattell Table of Contents