A COMPARISON OF COMPETING MODELS UNDERLYING RESPONSES TO THE MYERS-BRIGGS TYPE INDICATOR

The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI; Myers & McCaulley, 1985) is the most frequently used personality instrument in business, counseling, and education, but its construct validity remains largely unexplored ( National Research Council, 1991). A confirmatory factor analysis was c onducted on a sample of 1,030 working adults to provide a competitive test of four alternative models of responses to MBTI items. Although t he MBTI model was found to provide the best fit of the alternative mod els, none of the models provided an optimal fit. This confirmatory fac tor analysis and a follow-up exploratory factor analysis were used to identify necessary scoring changes and item deletions. Use of the revi sed scoring scheme would result in a change of the MBTI profile for 28 .7% of respondents.