FolioStart free
All scales

HEXACO-60

HEXACO-60
psychologysocial sciencesFree for research use

Permission: Free for research use. Free for non-commercial academic research, with no licence fee. Cite the original publication.

A 60-item short form of the HEXACO Personality Inventory measuring six broad dimensions: Honesty-Humility (H), Emotionality (E), eXtraversion (X), Agreeableness (A), Conscientiousness (C), and Openness to Experience (O). Adds a sixth factor (H) to the Big Five and reframes Agreeableness and Emotionality around the moral and affective components of interpersonal behavior.

Items
60
Response format
5-point Likert scale
Version
1.0
Subscales
6

Ready-to-cite methods sentence

Personality was measured with the HEXACO-60 (Ashton & Lee, 2009), a 60-item short form of the HEXACO Personality Inventory-Revised that assesses six dimensions (Honesty-Humility, Emotionality, eXtraversion, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, and Openness to Experience) on a 5-point Likert scale. Subscale scores were computed as the mean of 10 items after reverse-scoring the flagged items.

Citing this in a methods section? See the APA 7 guide (Author–date citations for psychology and the social sciences). Or compare all six citation styles.

Use HEXACO-60 in Folio Surveyor

Add it to a study with the full items, scoring, and analysis built in.

Open Surveyor
Save HEXACO-60 Cite HEXACO-60 in a new doc

Reliability & validation

Validation population
Canadian college students (N = 936) and Oregon community adults (N = 734) reported in Ashton & Lee (2009)
Subscale alphas
0.77–0.8
Cronbach alpha range
0.73–0.8

Subscales

Honesty-HumilityEmotionalityeXtraversionAgreeablenessConscientiousnessOpenness to Experience

Response anchors

Strongly disagree · Disagree · Neutral · Agree · Strongly agree

Known limitations

Researchers should verify the reverse-scoring key against the Appendix of Ashton and Lee (2009) before data analysis; the HEXACO-60 uses a different keying pattern from the Big Five. Cross-cultural validation is extensive but not universal, so check for a validated translation before using a non-English version.

Original citation

Ashton, M. C., & Lee, K. (2009). The HEXACO-60: A short measure of the major dimensions of personality. Journal of Personality Assessment, 91(4), 340-345.

https://doi.org/10.1080/00223890902935878

Questions researchers ask

What does the HEXACO-60 measure?

A 60-item short form of the HEXACO Personality Inventory measuring six broad dimensions: Honesty-Humility (H), Emotionality (E), eXtraversion (X), Agreeableness (A), Conscientiousness (C), and Openness to Experience (O). Adds a sixth factor (H) to the Big Five and reframes Agreeableness and Emotionality around the mora…

How many items does the HEXACO-60 have?

The HEXACO-60 (HEXACO-60) has 60 items across 6 subscales: Honesty-Humility, Emotionality, eXtraversion, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, Openness to Experience.

Is the HEXACO-60 free to use?

The HEXACO-60 is free to use for non-commercial academic research. You don't need to pay a license fee, but you should always cite the original publication.

Who developed the HEXACO-60, and how do I cite it?

Ashton, M. C., & Lee, K. (2009). The HEXACO-60: A short measure of the major dimensions of personality. Journal of Personality Assessment, 91(4), 340-345. https://doi.org/10.1080/00223890902935878

Or track new research mentioning HEXACO-60 as it publishes

Related scales

BFI-44Big Five InventoryBFI-2Big Five Inventory-2Mini-IPIPMini-IPIPTIPITen-Item Personality InventoryBFNEBrief Fear of Negative Evaluation ScaleNFC-SFNeed for Cognition Scale (Short Form)

Library entry verified September 2026. Metadata is provided for reference; item wording is available inside Folio Surveyor, subject to each instrument's licensing.