Introduction
Somewhere between the consideration of individual personality parts (e.g., need for achievement, extroversion, intelligence), and global personality structure (e.g., broad areas of personality function such as conation, affect, motivation), it makes sense to talk about the structure of groups of personality parts as a transitional topic. This topic concerns how groups of individual parts -- especially traits, for example -- build into larger structures.
Supertraits are structures made up of distinct but intercorrelated traits. An example of such a supertrait is Extraversion. Extraversion is a so-called supertrait because it has a structure to it that includes several additional traits. That is, it is composed of a number of distinct, smaller traits. For example, from some perspectives, extraversion is composed of lively affect (also called surgency), sociability, and impulsiveness. Another example of a supertrait is general intelligence. It is composed of a number of distinct, but also intercorrelated intelligences including verbal intelligence, perceptual-organizational intelligence, spatial intelligence, and other similar instances.
Supertraits, that is, "correlated trait groups" are important but they are not the only possible structure that multiple traits form.
Supertrait Structures
Among the most important of these larger structures of traits today are Eysenck's PEN model and the Big Five. Both are represented below.
The Big Five -- A very nice description of the Big Five personality traits is provided on a web site maintained by Sanjay Srivastava.
The Big Five, again -- The International Personality Item Pool site is one of the most important regarding the Big Five. It is, however, a bit more technical than the above two. It is also a very authoritative site and worth visiting for anyone in the discipline.
If you are interested in taking a Big Five personality scale at no charge, and receiving good feedback from it, see the first entry in the Recommended Personality Tests. The recommended site is probably the best free general self-assessment tool on the web.
Eysenck's PEN Model -- Scott Acton's site on Eysenck's PEN model is one of the most comprehensive. It is part of his broader site on personality research.