Chunk #21 — Evidence for the Existence of Positive and Negative Urgency — Urgency in Relation to Comprehensive Models of Personality — Factor analyses relating positive and negative urgency to comprehensive personality structure
We began by testing whether the factor structure of the 30 facets was consistent with past findings, in order to confirm that this sample is appropriate for examining the urgency traits’ relation to the other factors. We therefore first conducted exploratory factor analyses using principal components analysis with varimax rotation, as is typically done in factor analyses of the NEO-PI-R (McCrae, Zonderman, Costa, & Bond, 1996), in order to confirm that the typical five factor structure would emerge. It did. The first five eigenvalues ranged from 7.42 to 1.74, and both a scree test and parallel analysis supported the five factor solution. Using parallel analysis, we found that the eigenvalue for the sixth factor was smaller than the average eigenvalue produced from 100 factor analyses of random data, and smaller than the eigenvalue at the 95th percentile of eigenvalues produced from random data. Loadings on the five were very similar to what has been reported in the past: each of the five factors (neuroticism, extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, and openness to experience) emerged, with the strongest loadings from their designated facets.
