Kirstin Appelt of the Center for Research on Environmental Decisions at Columbia has put together a nifty online index of personality measures. It’s called the Decision Making Individual Differences Inventory, which abbreviates to DMIDI. The email announcement I just got helpfully points out that the name “rhymes with ‘p. diddy’.” That may be my second-favorite part.

My first favorite part is that it’s a cleanly-designed, well-put-together website that looks like it will have tons of useful information for researchers. And even though it has an emphasis on measures relevant to decision-making research, the site casts a pretty wide net, including a number of Big Five measures and measures of “cognitive ability.” The latter gets snoot-quotes because for some reason economists and JDM researchers don’t like the word “intelligence.” (For that matter, they have a pretty narrow view of the word “personality” too. The section for trait measures is simply labeled “personality,” which is somehow placed in contrast to measures of motivation, attitudes, cognitive style, and ability — all of which, of course, are part of what makes you the person that you are, i.e., your personality.)

But I digress. It’s still under construction, but it looks like it will be a great resource. The site is set up as a wiki, which raises the possibility that they’ll be able to harness the academic community’s energy in updating and expanding it. I can see why they might be cautious about going down that road (who wants to moderate an edit war between a bunch of cantankerous professors?), but even in its current form it’s really nice.