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The purpose of this study was to adapt a Japanese version of the Big Five Inventory-2 (BFI-2-J) to examine its factor structure, reliability, validity, and measurement invariance. The BFI-2-J assesses five domains and 15 facets of the Big Five personality traits. We analyzed two datasets: 487 Japanese undergraduates and 500 Japanese adults. The results of the principal component analysis and confirmatory factor analysis revealed that the domain-facet structure of the BFI-2-J was similar to that of other language versions. The reliability of the BFI-2-J is sufficient. The correlation coefficients between the BFI-2-J and the other Big Five and self-esteem measures supported convergent and discriminant validity. Moreover, we confirmed measurement invariance across age and sex groups in domain-level and facet-level models. The results suggest that the BFI-2-J is a good instrument for measuring the Big Five personality traits and their facets in Japan. The BFI-2-J is expected to be useful in Japanese personality research and international comparative research.

The present study examines changes over time in 12 traits of the Yatabe-Guilford Personality Inventory that has been commonly used in Japan. A cross-temporal meta-analysis was conducted on 245 samples (95 papers) of Japanese people who completed the scale between 1954 to 2012 (total N = 50,327). Most of the traits showed curvilinear changes with survey year. Especially in recent years, Emotional Instability traits tended to increase with time whereas Dominance and Non-reflection traits tended to decrease. Changes to Thinking Extraversion and Nervousness correlated strongly with the changes to self-esteem between 1984 and 2009. Implications of the changes in the personality traits with survey year are discussed along with future research directions.