Exploring the p‐Factor in Adolescence: A Bifactor Exploratory Structural Equation Modeling Approach and Its Association With Emerging Personality Pathology
Bibliographic record
Abstract
INTRODUCTION: To account for the limitations of categorical taxonomies, a general psychopathology factor (p-factor) has been proposed as a transdiagnostic dimension that captures the shared variance across various forms of psychopathology. However, further research is required to clarify the specific characteristics that define the p-factor, particularly in adolescence - a period marked by heightened vulnerability to psychological disorders and significant developmental changes. METHODS: This study utilized a sample of 1366 cisgender adolescents (56% assigned female at birth, Mage = 16.25, SD = 1.44) to examine the structure of the p-factor using Bifactor Exploratory Structural Equation Modeling. The study also explored the association between the p-factor and emerging personality pathology, focusing on self and interpersonal dimensions. RESULTS: The p-factor was characterized by items reflecting negative affectivity, emotional dysregulation, and behavioral problems. Greater difficulties in self-related (e.g., sense of self, self-acceptance, and goals) and interpersonal dimensions (e.g., family relationships, aggression, and sexuality) were associated with higher levels of general psychopathology. A small but significant negative association was found between the quality of peer relationships and the p-factor, suggesting a potential protective role of friendships. CONCLUSIONS: The study highlights the multifaceted nature of the p-factor, confirming its relevance in capturing general psychological maladjustment during adolescence. The p-factor demonstrated a double-edged nature, encapsulating externalizing (e.g., impulsive behaviors, aggression) and internalizing symptoms (e.g., feelings of inadequacy and guilt). These findings provide insights into the interplay between general psychopathology and personality pathology, supporting a model that integrates self and interpersonal dimensions to understand adolescent psychopathology.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".