Unravelling the Factor Structure of the South African Personality Inventory: A fifteen- year journey

The once popular controversy between emic and etic approaches has given way to the notion that we need both approaches in cross-cultural psychology. The South African Personality Inventory (SAPI) strikes a balance between emic and etic aspects utilizing both universal and culture-specific features. Following a GloCal approach the SAPI yielded a comprehensive picture of personality in the multicultural South Africa. The SAPI was developed based on an extensive qualitative study (N = 1217) of the implicit personality conceptions (49 818) in the country’s 11 official languages (Nel et al., 2012). Items (2500) were generated and selected (to a final set of 146) with a continuous focus on cultural adequacy and translatability of items (Hill et., 2013). In a first study (N = 1225) (Fetvadjiev et al., 2015) exploring the SAPI structure with EFA, we identified six factors (comprising a Positive and a Negative Social-Relational factor, Neuroticism, Extraversion, Conscientiousness, and Openness). These factors are reminiscent of the Big Five with a richer representation of the social-relational domain. In a second study (N = 4446) (Meiring et al., 2017), exploratory structural equation modeling confirmed the six factors structure. Our findings give a new perspective to the emic–etic study of personality and call for an approach that treats cross-cultural similarities and differences in a more balanced manner, in which both kinds of components are represented in an instrument.