“The Abbreviation of Personality, or How to Measure 200 Personality Scales With 200 Items”, 2010 (; backlinks; similar):
Personality researchers have recently advocated the use of very short personality inventories in order to minimize administration time. However, few such inventories are currently available.
Here I introduce an automated method that can be used to abbreviate virtually any personality inventory with minimal effort.
After validating the method against existing measures in Studies 1 and 2, a new 181-item inventory is generated in Study 3 that accurately recaptures scores on 8 different broadband inventories comprising 203 distinct scales.
Collectively, the results validate a powerful new way to improve the efficiency of personality measurement in research settings.