Are small measures big problems? A meta-analytic investigation of brief measures of the Big Five

Pressures to maximize survey space or mitigate respondent fatigue can lead researchers to employ abbreviated during data collection. This is problematic because short-form measures can suffer from reduced reliability and validity. Thus, we conducted a meta-analysis to determine whether the use of brief measures of the Big Five in business research tends to produce psychometrically sound and criterion-valid results. We compared scale internal consistencies and effect size estimates from our study with meta-analytic estimates for long measures of the Big Five, as established in the literature. Our results indicated that, in general, internal consistency estimates were not substantively different. However, the criterion-related validity comparisons indicated that several point estimates for individual measures did not fall within the credibility intervals obtained from prior meta-analyses. This suggests that although brief measures of the Big Five might appear acceptable for use in business research, caution should be exercised when choosing a brief measure.