Abstract

ABAL, Facundo Juan Pablo; MENENDEZ, Javier Agustín  and  FELIX ATTORRESI, Horacio. APPLICATION OF THE ITEM RESPONSE THEORY TO THE NEUROTICISM SCALE OF THE BIG FIVE INVENTORY. Ajayu [online]. 2019, vol.17, n.2, pp.424-443. ISSN 2077-2161.

The widespread impact that Neuroticism has on the health system has motivated its measurement to be used in prevention tasks. Due to its brevity and international recognition, the Neuroticism scale of the Big Five Inventory presents optimal characteristics for these applications. In this work it is proposed to deepen the study of the psychometric properties of this scale using Item Response Theory (IRT). There were 742 adults from Buenos Aires, Argentina (55.3% women). At first IRT analysis revealed the need to eliminate one of the original items due to inadequate functioning. For the remaining 7 items, the assumptions of unidimensionality and local independence were verified. All showed an acceptable fit to the Graded Response Model and a medium-high discriminatory capacity. Gender differential functioning was not observed. Moderate correlations were found with the scales of the SCL-90-R Inventory. The Test Information Function showed that precision is acceptable even for extreme trait values, which are of special interest for clinical-epidemiological applications.

Keywords : Neuroticism; Emotional stability; Five Factor Model; Item Response Theory.

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