A COMPREHENSIVE FACTOR ANALYSIS OF PERSONALITY QUESTIONNAIRE ITEMS: A TEST OF TWENTY PUTATIVE FACTOR HYPOTHESES

Area of Science:

• Psychology
• Personality Psychology
• Psychometrics

Background:

• Personality research often relies on factor analysis to identify underlying trait structures.
• Previous studies have proposed various personality factor hypotheses, requiring empirical validation.
• A comprehensive item pool is crucial for robust factor analytic investigations.

Purpose of the Study:

• To empirically evaluate twenty putative factor hypotheses (PFH's) of personality.
• To assess the stability of personality factors across different rotation methods (orthogonal and oblique).
• To identify and confirm key personality dimensions within a large, cross-continental sample.

Main Methods:

• Literature survey to compile a representative item pool of 1726 items.
• Selection of 400 items representing 20 PFH's for questionnaire development.
• Administration of a balanced questionnaire to 1003 participants across continents.
• Principal axis factoring followed by four rotation methods (two orthogonal, two oblique) on 401 variables.

Main Results:

• Identified significant personality factors including Sociability (SY), Adjustment-Emotionality (AE), Dominance (AD), and Superego (SG).
• Other factors such as Hypochondriac-Medical (HM), Impulsiveness (IP), Cooperativeness-Considerateness (CC), Inferiority (IF), Persistence (PS), Trust vs. Suspicion (TS), and General Activity (GA) were also found.
• Results across rotation methods indicated consistent identification of major personality dimensions, supporting their validity.

Conclusions:

• The study successfully validated several key personality factors through rigorous factor analytic procedures.
• The findings support the existence of distinct, measurable personality dimensions that are relatively stable across different analytical rotations.
• The identified factors provide a robust framework for understanding personality structure and can inform future psychological research.