ON DIMENSIONALITY, DISCRIMINANT VALIDITY, AND THE ROLE OF PSYCHOMETRIC ANALYSES IN PERSONALITY THEORY AND MEASUREMENT - REPLY

D. M. Webster and A. W. Kruglanski's (1994) Need for Closure Scale (NF CS) confounds multiple dimensions and is redundant with existing instr uments (S. L. Neubeg, T.N. Judice, & S. G. West, 1997). A. W. Kruglans ki and his colleagues (1997) dismissed these findings as ''psychometri c naysaying,'' although they presented no data that refute them. Moreo ver, Kruglanski et al. (1997) suggested that researchers (a) be unconc erned with the NFCS's lack of discriminant validity and (b) use the sc ale as if it were unidimensional. These recommendations are problemati c. Using the NFCS in this manner invites interpretational ambiguity an d theoretical confusion. In contrast to the Kruglanski et al. (1997) p osition, proper psychometric analyses play a critical role in theory t esting and in the development of conceptually coherent measures of ind ividual differences.