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Category: Project

Description: The Reproducible Brain Charts initiative aims to aggregate and harmonize phenotypic and neuroimage data to delineate novel mechanisms regarding the developmental basis of psychopathology in youth and yield reproducible growth charts of brain development. To reach this objective, the first step to phenotypic harmonization is to characterize psychopathology in a way that general and specific aspects are dissociated, so more specific relationships with the brain could be established. Bifactor models of mental health problems suits this purpose. The understanding of what the bifactor model of psychopathology represents must go through the identification of the different published models, the estimation of their global fit, model-based reliability and criterion validity, whether the models are influenced by other sample characteristics and whether the derived factors from different models inform a similar construct. This would ultimately help to elucidate whether different models represent similar or distinct constructs while reliably representing psychopathology. To answer these questions, the present study aimed to compile published bifactor models of psychopathology originating from different methodologies and compare them in their global model fit, model-based reliability, invariance and correlations among the constructs of these models. Doing so allowed us to understand the extent to which the model specifications and item selection impacted model quality, and if the models are distinguishable, to select the best model to represent the bifactor model of psychopathology.