Confirmatory factor analysis of the tridimensional personality questionnaire: comments on Bagby, Parker and Joffe

This note is concerned with the interpretation of results of a confirmatory factor analysis of data from the Tridimensional Personality Questionnaire, which has been proposed by Bagby, Parker and Joffe (1992; Personality and Individual Differences, 13, 1245–1246). Contrary to their claim of having found a model providing ‘a remarkably good fit’ between the obtained factor structure and the hypothesized dimensions corresponding to the three dimensional biosocial model of personality proposed by Cloninger, it is argued that the cited fitting evidence does not convincingly point to a tenable model. Issues in structural equation model evaluation, as well as possible reasons for lack of an acceptable fit of the model, are discussed.