DETECTABILITY OF ITEMS IN THE EYSENCK PERSONALITY INVENTORY

Fifty university students completed Form B of the Eysenck Personality Inventory, and were then asked to indicate which items were measures of neuroticism (N), extraversion (E) and lying. Almost all items were correctly detected, and detectability of items as N and E items was highly correlated with their factor loadings Correct detection of N items was not related to N factor loadings, but correct detection of E items was related to E factor loadings. This latter finding appeared to be due to the unsatisfactory nature of the E scale. Ability to detect items was not related to personality or intelligence. It was concluded that a major difficulty exists: the better an item (in terms of its factor loading) the more detectable it is.