Random intercept EFA of personality scales

Previous research suggests that simple structure CFAs of Big Five personality measures fail to accurately reflect the scale’s complex factorial structure, whereas EFAs generally perform better. Another strand of research suggests that acquiescence or uniform response bias masks the scale’s “true” factorial structure. Random Intercept EFA (RI-EFA) captures acquiescence as well as the complex item-factor structure typical for personality measures. It is applied to the NEO-FFI and the BFI scale to test whether an accurate model-to-data fit can be achieved and whether the “clarity” of the factorial structure improves. The results lend confidence in the general effectiveness of RI-EFA whenever acquiescence bias is an issue. Example Mplus code is provided for replication.