Purpose – To clarify the nature of the error term in formative measurement models, as it had been misinterpreted in prior research. Design/methodology/approach – The error term in formative measurement models is analytically contrasted with the measurement errors typically found in...

Purpose – Higher-order factor models have recently been dismissed as a ‘misleading’, ‘meaningless’, and ‘needless’ approach for modeling multidimensional constructs (Lee and Cadogan, 2013; L & C, 2013 hereafter). The purpose of this paper is to show that – in contrast to L & C’s...