The purpose of this study was to examine the structural validity of the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI) in Chinese undergraduate students. A cross-sectional questionnaire survey with 631 Chinese undergraduate students was conducted, and the questionnaire package included a measure of demographic characteristics, PSQI, Chinese editions of Center for Epidemiologic Studies-Depression, State- Trait Anxiety Inventory, Rumination Response Scale, and Perceived Social Support Scale. Results showed that the item “use of sleep medicine” was not suitable for use with this population, that a two-factor model provided the best fit to the data as assessed through confirmatory factor analysis, and that other indices were consistently correlated with the sleep quality but not the sleep efficiency factor.

The article tackles the practice of testing latent variable models. The analysis covered recently published studies from 11 psychology journals varying in orientation and impact. Seventy-five studies that matched the criterion of applying some of the latent modeling techniques were reviewed. Results indicate the presence of a general tendency to ignore the model test (χ²) followed by the acceptance of approximate fit hypothesis without detailed model examination yielding relevant empirical evidence. Due to reduced sensitivity of such a procedure to confront theory with data, there is an almost invariable tendency to accept the theoretical model. This absence of model test consequences, manifested in frequently unsubstantiated neglect of evidence speaking against the model, thus implies the perilous question of whether such empirical testing of latent structures (the way it is widely applied) makes sense at all.