Empirical evidence for a four factor framework of personality disorder organization: multigroup confirmatory factor analysis of the Millon Clinical Multiaxial Inventory - III Personality Disorder Scales across Belgian and Danish data samples

The factor structure of the Millon Clinical Multiaxial Inventory-III (Millon,
Millon, Davis, & Grossman, 2006) personality disorder scales was
analyzed using multigroup confirmatory factor analysis on data obtained
from a Danish (N = 2030) and a Belgian (N = 1210) sample. Two-,
three-, and four factor models, a priori specified using structures found
by Dyce, O’Connor, Parkins, and Janzen (1997), were fitted to the data.
The best fitting model was a four factor structure (RMSEA = .066, GFI =
.98, CFI = .93) with partially invariant factor loadings. The robustness
of this four-factor model clearly supports the efforts to organize future
personality disorder description in a four-factor framework by corroborating
four domains that were predominant in dimensional models
(Widiger & Simonsen, 2005): Factor 1, 2, 3, and 4 respectively corresponded
to emotional dysregulation versus stability, antagonism versus
compliance, extraversion versus introversion, and constraint versus
impulsivity.