Basic Personality Traits Inventory (BPTI)

Basic Personality Traits Inventory (BPTI) was developed by Gençöz and Öncül (2012) in order to assess basic personality traits in Turkish culture. It consists 45 adjectives of personality rated on a 5–point scale ranging from 1 (“This characteristic does not represent me at all”) to 5 (“This characteristic represents me very well”). The results of factor analysis with varimax rotation revealed six factors, five of which were consistent with the literature but the sixth factor related to negative valence was extracted in this study. These factors were extraversion (α = .89), conscientiousness (α = .85), agreeableness (α = .85), neuroticism (α = .83), openness to experience (α = .80), and negative valence (α=.71) (Gençöz, & Öncül, 2012).

Karanci, Işıklı, Aker, Gül, Erkan, Özkol, and Güzel (2012) used BPTI in their study conducted with a Turkish community sample of 969 subjects. The researchers conducted exploratory factor analysis and as in the original research of Gençöz and Öncül (2012) they found six factors explaining 44.96% of the total variance. The internal reliability coefficients of these factors; namely,39 agreeableness, conscientiousness, extraversion, neuroticism, openness to experience, and negative valence were .83, .78, .78, .76, .67, and .59, respectively.

In the present study, BPTI was used to assess personality characteristics of traffic accident survivors. The internal reliability coefficients of the subscales were extraversion (α = .87), agreeableness (α = .87), conscientiousness (α = .81), openness to experience (α = .71), neuroticism (α = .69), and negative valence (α= .63). The internal reliability coefficient of the total scale was found to be .77. The scale is presented in Appendix B.