Ipsative personality questionnaires can reduce the effects of social desirability. However, the answering‐format induces artificial dependencies, which raises questions about its normative interpretability. In a field study 145 German speaking expatriates were assessed with the ipsative OPQ32i (SHL, 1999) and the normative NEO‐PI‐R (Ostendorf & Angleitner, 2004) in seven countries. A significant set correlation shows that the OPQ32i captures normative variances (R2shrunk= 0.99). According to a multi‐trait‐multi‐method matrix relationships between scales and factors of both instruments are interpretable conceptually. Therefore, ipsative questionnaires seem to be applicable for inter‐individual comparisons if some specific conditions are met.