title: Empirical evidence for a four factor framework of personality disorder organization: multigroup confirmatory factor analysis of the Millon Clinical Multiaxial Inventory-III personality disorder scales across Belgian and Danish data samples.
abstract: The factor structure of the Millon Clinical Multiaxial Inventory-III (Millon, Millon, Davis, & Grossman, 2006) personality disorder scales was analyzed using multigroup confirmatory factor analysis on data obtained from a Danish (N = 2030) and a Belgian (N = 1210) sample. Two-, three-, and four factor models, a priori specified using structures found by Dyce, O'Connor, Parkins, and Janzen (1997), were fitted to the data. The best fitting model was a four factor structure (RMSEA = .066, GFI = .98, CFI = .93) with partially invariant factor loadings. The robustness of this four-factor model clearly supports the efforts to organize future personality disorder description in a four-factor framework by corroborating four domains that were predominant in dimensional models (Widiger & Simonsen, 2005): Factor 1, 2, 3, and 4 respectively corresponded to emotional dysregulation versus stability, antagonism versus compliance, extraversion versus introversion, and constraint versus impulsivity.
authors.affiliation: Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB), Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences, Department of Clinical and Life Span Psychology, Brussels, Belgium. grossi@vub.ac.be
authors.forename: Gina
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Rossi
authors.forename: Ask
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Elklit
authors.forename: Erik
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Simonsen
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D001530:Belgium; D003718:Denmark; D005163:Factor Analysis, Statistical; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D008960:Models, Psychological; D010552:Personality Assessment / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D010554:Personality Disorders / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000523:psychology*; D010556:Personality Tests; D011594:Psychometrics; D014177:Translations; D055815:Young Adult