title: The South African Personality Inventory (SAPI): a culture-informed instrument for the country's main ethnocultural groups.
abstract: We present the development and the underlying structure of a personality inventory for the main ethnocultural groups of South Africa, using an emic-etic approach. The South African Personality Inventory (SAPI) was developed based on an extensive qualitative study of the implicit personality conceptions in the country's 11 official languages (Nel et al., 2012). Items were generated and selected (to a final set of 146) with a continuous focus on cultural adequacy and translatability. Students and community adults (671 Blacks, 198 Coloreds, 104 Indians, and 391 Whites) completed the inventory. A 6-dimensional structure (comprising a positive and a negative Social-Relational factor, Neuroticism, Extraversion, Conscientiousness, and Openness) was equivalent across groups and replicated in an independent sample of 139 Black and 270 White students. The SAPI correlated highly overall with impression-management aspects, but lower with lying aspects of social desirability. The SAPI social-relational factors were distinguishable from the Big Five in a joint factor analysis; the multiple correlations with the Big Five were .64 (positive) and .51 (negative social-relational). Implications and suggestions for emic-etic instrument and model development are discussed.
authors.affiliation: Department of Human Resource Management, University of Pretoria.
authors.forename: Velichko H
authors.initials: VH
authors.lastname: Fetvadjiev
authors.affiliation: Department of Human Resource Management, University of Pretoria.
authors.forename: Deon
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Meiring
authors.affiliation: Department of Culture Studies, Tilburg University.
authors.forename: Fons J R
authors.initials: FJ
authors.lastname: van de Vijver
authors.affiliation: School of Human Resource Sciences, North-West University.
authors.forename: J Alewyn
authors.initials: JA
authors.lastname: Nel
authors.affiliation: Department of Industrial Psychology and People Management, University of Johannesburg.
authors.forename: Carin
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Hill
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D001008:Anxiety Disorders; D044466:Asian People; D044383:Black People / Q000523:psychology*; D005006:Ethnicity; D005120:Extraversion, Psychological; D005163:Factor Analysis, Statistical; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007802:Language; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D000075384:Neuroticism; D010551:Personality; D010555:Personality Inventory; D012919:Social Behavior; D012928:Social Desirability; D013019:South Africa; D013334:Students; D044465:White People / Q000523:psychology*; D055815:Young Adult