Psychometric Properties of Hierarchical Psychiatric Symptoms on the General Population

Although psychiatric disorders have conventionally been treated categorically, recent research indicates a continuous and hierarchical structure among psychiatric symptoms, with a general psychopathology factor (p-factor) at the top and several specific factors at lower levels. However, understanding of the psychometric properties of these factors in the general population remains limited. In this study, analyzing responses from approximately 1000 individuals across three datasets to various diagnostic questionnaires, we extracted general and specific factors using diverse hierarchical structures and factor numbers. Comparative analysis demonstrated robust properties of the general factor across different models, with higher explained variance and internal consistency compared with specific factors. Consistent with the p-factor concept, the general factor was correlated with diverse diagnostic histories. Conversely, the content of specific factors varied with factor numbers, and some corresponded to traditional diagnostic categories. Our findings, we believe, provide a scaffold for disentangling the complex structure among psychiatric symptoms.