Quantoids corner: Top-down "hierarchical" factor model development

The following is a post by the blogmaster (Kevin McGrew), who is also a member of IQs Corner Virtual Community of Scholars project.

This post is for my fellow quantoids. A nifty article on the idea (and methods/procedures) for developing top-down (versus traditional bottom-up) "hierarchical" factor structures.

Whenever I can find some time I might try this suggested approach on the CHC-based collection of WJ III tests. So much data....so little time.

• Goldberg, L. (2006). Doing it all Bass-Ackwards: The development of hierarchical factor structures from the top down. Journal of Research in Personality, 40, 347–358 (click here to view article)

Abstract

• A simple method is presented for examining the hierarchical structure of a set of variables, based on factor scores from rotated solutions involving one to many factors. The correlations among orthogonal factor scores from adjoining levels can be viewed as path coeYcients in a hierarchical structure. The method is easily implemented using any of a wide variety of standard computer programs, and it has proved to be extremely useful in a number of diverse applications, some of which are here described.

Technorati Tags: psychology, statistics, measurement, hierarchical, factor analysis, intelligence, CHC theory, personality, cognition, educational psychology

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