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More Than g-Factors: Second-Stratum Factors Should Not Be Ignored

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 October 2015

Serena Wee*
Affiliation:
School of Social Sciences, Singapore Management University
Daniel A. Newman
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign
Q. Chelsea Song
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign
*
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Serena Wee, Singapore Management University, School of Social Sciences, 90 Stamford Road, Singapore 178903. E-mail: [email protected]

Extract

Ree, Carretta, and Teachout (2015) outlined a compelling argument for the pervasiveness of dominant general factors (DGFs) in psychological measurement. We agree that DGFs are important and that they are found for various constructs (e.g., cognitive abilities, work withdrawal), especially when an “unrotated principal components” analysis is conducted (Ree et al., p. 8). When studying hierarchical constructs, however, a narrow emphasis on uncovering DGFs would be incomplete at best and detrimental at worst. This commentary largely echoes the arguments made by Wee, Newman, and Joseph (2014), and Schneider and Newman (2015), who provided reasons for considering second-stratum cognitive abilities. We believe these same arguments in favor of second-stratum factors in the ability domain can be applied to hierarchical constructs more generally.

Type
Commentaries
Copyright
Copyright © Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology 2015 

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