Toward a taxonomy of trait adjectives in Filipino: comparing personality lexicons across cultures

A Study on the Item Development Strategies of a Self-Reported Personality Scale

“…One of the most effective methods to resolve this situation is to develop powerful personality scales. Currently, it is almost impossible for researchers to develop a broadly accepted personality questionnaire; even the fivefactor theory of more cross-cultural consistency also has cultural adaptive difficulties in Germany, the Netherland and the United States [15], Italy [16], Philippine [17], China [4], [18]. Moreover, because of the context effects of personality, it"s also difficult to develop a scale that can be adaptive for any group of people in a particular culture.…”

Studying Personality Traits Across Cultures: Philippine Examples

“…Clearly, one can identify many trait terms in Filipino languages that are difficult to translate or that have culture-specific connotations. However, in comprehensive studies of the Filipino (Tagalog) trait lexicon we have found that the person-descriptive lexicon in Filipino is roughly comparable in size to the person-descriptive lexicons in many other languages, including German, Dutch, Italian, Spanish, Hungarian, Czech, and Polish, all of which are substantially smaller, however, than the English person-descriptive lexicon (which has many obscure terms) (Church, Katigbak, & Reyes, 1996 Rather well. Cross-cultural researchers typically investigate this question by translating and administering personality inventories developed in one culture (usually in the U.S. or Europe) in a new culture.…”

Lexical studies of Filipino person descriptors: adding personality‐relevant social and physical attributes

“…Church et al (1996) (2005) found good one-to-one correspondence between ML7 marker scales and the seven Philippine lexical dimensions. Ashton and Lee (2007) interpret the Filipino Concern for Others versus Egotism factor as a broad Honesty-Humility dimension, encompassing both honestyhumility and altruism terms.…”

“…Social and physical attributes-The 268 social and physical attribute terms were obtained from the comprehensive dictionary-based list of 6,900 person-descriptive adjectives derived by Church et al (1996). Of that list, 3,478 terms had been classified by at least six of nine Filipino judges as referring to social roles, statuses, and effects (3,037 terms), or to physical abilities, anatomy, and appearance (441 terms).…”

“…In the typical lexical study, comprehensive or representative sets of person-descriptive terms, usually trait adjectives, have been used to obtain self or peer ratings, and factor analyses have been conducted to identify the dimensions that account for the covariation among the terms. When conducted in diverse languages, lexical studies can identify cross-cultural universals in personality language, individual-differences dimensions, and person perception categories, but might also reveal how cultural differences in values and experiences influence persondescriptive categories (Church, Katigbak, & Reyes, 1996; John, Angleitner, & Ostendorf, Address correspondence to: A. Timothy Church, Department of Educational Leadership and Counseling Psychology, Cleveland Hall, Washington State University, Pullman, WA 99164-2136, church@mail.wsu.edu; Fax: (509) Phone: (509) 1988). In the present study, we extended previous lexical research in the Philippines (e.g., Church et al, 1996;Church, Reyes, Katigbak, & Grimm, 1997) by examining additional categories of person description-in particular, terms for social roles, statuses and effects, and physical anatomy and appearance-and by relating the derived Filipino dimensions to alternative structural models in the literature.…”