Instructor:
Aidan Wright, PhD (University of Michigan)

Workshop Format:
Two-Hour Self-Paced Workshop

Workshop Dates and Times:
May 6, 2026
(2:00pm - 4:00pm ET)

Video Availability:
Video will be available on May 7, 2026

Bifactor models have surged in popularity across psychology, offering an appealing framework for partitioning variance in multidimensional constructs into general and specific components. In this webinar, attendees will receive a comprehensive introduction to bifactor models — what they are, what they were designed to do, and why they have become a default tool for modeling constructs with both broad and narrow dimensions. But popularity has not come without controversy. The webinar will also address growing concerns about bifactor models, including their tendency to produce superior fit relative to alternatives regardless of the true data-generating structure, challenges in parameter estimation, and questions about the substantive interpretability of the general and specific factors they yield. Attendees will leave with a balanced understanding of when bifactor models are genuinely informative, when they are misleading, and what to watch out for when fitting and interpreting them in practice.