Thirteen eigenvalues based on the sample correlation matrix (the procedure used in Mplus) were above 1 but an inspection of the scree plot and various solutions suggested an interpretable Big 5 structure (see also Markon et al., 2005). Of note, the inter-factor correlations for the five factor model were not substantial using most rules of thumb (N and E: −.23; N and A: .03; N and C: −.23; N and O: −.03; E and A: .05; E and C: .06; E and O: .39; A and C: −.02; A and O: −.16; C and O: .02). We then submitted this matrix to a second maximum likelihood EFA and attempted to extract higher-order factors. However, this model would not converge within 1000 iterations and the estimates were not sensible when the number of iterations was increased to 5,000 (e.g., the loading for E was estimated at 33.497 and no standard error could be computed).
