Explaining general and specific factors in longitudinal, multimethod, and bifactor models: Some caveats and recommendations.

An increasing number of psychological studies are devoted to the analysis of g-factor structures. One key purpose of applying g-factor models is to identify predictors or potential causes of the general and specific effects. Typically, researchers relate predictor variables directly to the general and specific factors using a classical mimic approach. However, this procedure bears some methodological challenges, which often lead to model...