From a dictionary to sixteen factors
Cattell started in the 1940s with the trait words of the English language and let the statistics decide how many dimensions they contained. He found that personality has layers.6,2
A self-estimate on the published factor names. It has no 16PF items or scoring, and it isn't an assessment. The pole wording is paraphrased.
Sixteen fold into five
Factor-analysing the 16 primary scores produces five global factors that describe personality more broadly. One handbook calls these the original Big Five.2,3
A short ability test inside a personality test
"Reasoning" is one of the 16 primary factors, so the questionnaire also contains a short ability scale. In the current edition its items are grouped at the end with their own instructions, and unlike the personality items they have right answers.3
Five editions in 44 years
The first edition was released in the US in 1949. The four revisions followed in 1956, 1962, 1968 and 1993; bar height shows the gap to the next edition.5,2
Fifth edition (1993), which Cattell began revising in 1988 to update items and norms.5 Item counts for the 1949 first edition aren't given in these sources.
References
- [1]Piedmont, R. L. Sixteen Personality Factor Questionnaire. In I. B. Weiner & W. E. Craighead (Eds.), Corsini Encyclopedia of Psychology (4th ed., pp. 1603–1605). Wiley. ResearchGate.researchgate.net
- [2]The 16PF Personality Questionnaire (overview document). Scribd.scribd.com
- [3]Cattell, H. E. P., & Mead, A. D. (2008). The Sixteen Personality Factor Questionnaire (16PF). In The SAGE Handbook of Personality Theory and Assessment (PDF).people.wku.edu (PDF)
- [4]16PF. The Behavioral Scientist glossary (2023).thebehavioralscientist.com
- [5]Cattell, R. B., & Cattell, H. E. P. (1995). Personality structure and the new fifth edition of the 16PF. Educational and Psychological Measurement, 55(6).journals.sagepub.com
- [6]Wikipedia contributors. 16PF Questionnaire (accessed 29 Sept 2026).en.wikipedia.org
- [7]Likelihood ratio tests under model misspecification in high dimensions (2022), §4.3 Analysis of the 16PF. arXiv:2203.05423.arxiv.org/pdf/2203.05423
- [8]The details of Cattell's 16 personality factors. ThePleasantPersonality (2023).thepleasantpersonality.com
Related historical tests
Cattell's ability test, published the same year as the 16PF. Where the 16PF maps personality, the Culture Fair test used non-verbal items to measure intelligence as free of language and schooling as possible.
The leading personality test before the 16PF, in which people tell stories about ambiguous pictures. The 16PF's self-report items and factor-analytic scoring take the opposite approach.
A post-war battery that also reports a profile of separate scores. The DAT profiles abilities for school guidance, the 16PF profiles personality, and both are read as shapes rather than single numbers.
A scale of everyday adaptive functioning rather than intelligence. Like the 16PF, it is a reminder that mid-century testing measured far more than IQ.
The main adult intelligence scale of the time. Its IQ scores measure ability, while the 16PF's profile measures normal-range personality, two separate questions about one person.
Non-verbal abstract reasoning at full length. The 16PF's Factor B scale samples the same kind of ability in only a handful of items.