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All General Factors Are Not Alike

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 October 2015

John P. Campbell
John P. Campbell*
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, University of Minnesota
*
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to John P. Campbell, Department of Psychology, University of Minnesota, 75 East River Road, Minneapolis, MN 55455. E-mail: campb006@umn.edu
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Extract

In their focal article, Ree, Carretta, and Teachout (2015) argue that a large general factor (DGF), defined as the first component of an unrotated principal components solution, is characteristic of many different domains. In their view, ignoring the DGF in assessment and prediction in industrial and organizational (I-O) psychology is counterproductive. They readily acknowledge that the existence of a DGF does not preclude the existence of distinguishable specific factors. Their message is simply that the general factor (unrotated) frequently accounts for over half the reliable variance, and rather than ignore it, the reasons for it and the usefulness of it should be investigated. Further, the general factor is a construct, and all constructs must be supported by the various kinds of evidence that demonstrate construct validity. The DGF is no exception.

Type
Commentaries
Information
Industrial and Organizational Psychology , Volume 8 , Issue 3 , September 2015 , pp. 428 - 434
Copyright
Copyright © Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology 2015 

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