intensity of relationship via color. In Figure 3 there are a total of 36 nonzero edges with the sparsity level amounting to 94.29%. The darkness of the color represents the intensity of the item associa- tion. The heat map suggests that the degree of item interdependence varies depending on the items and the personality scale being assessed. The figure indicates that the items within the same scale were more likely to interact; although a few in number, there were also items interrelated across the scales. Overall, the P scale appeared to have the most dependent item pairs. The strongest interactions were observed in the E and N scales. To lend some meaning to the locally dependent items and their corresponding estimated φ$_{jj}$ ′ values, we further examined the specific item pairs with conditional dependence. Given in Table 5 are item pairs with the greatest positive dependency. The table suggests that the item pairs tended to share common stimuli or similar wording. The first three pairs of the items, for instance, were coupled by the words, ‘party,’ ‘nervousness,’ and ‘people,’ respectively. The other item pairs seemed to have commonality in that they ask the same particular aspect of the intended scale. For example, the items 1 and 11 seemed to be concerned with recklessness, one of the characteristics in the P scale. The items 1, 3, and 8 may be seen related in light of social non-conformity. The following item pairs pertained to the same aspects of the E scale, sociableness and talkativeness, respectively. Notice that in Table 5 some items appear multiple times in the pairs, implying that the questions can be related through a bundle that consists of more than two items (e.g., items 1, 11, and 8). Table 6 lists those items connected via a clique. A clique is defined as a subset of items in which every pair of items in the subset is linked by an edge. Our analysis indicates that the maximal clique underlying the EPQ-R data consists of three items. Table 6 summarizes those observed with positive dependence. Table 6 suggests that items in the same personality scale were more likely to be interrelated with each other and the items within the same clique were associated with the certain aspect of the personality scale. The items in the first clique appeared to assess characteristics related to recklessness and inconsideration of an individual. The following clique seemed to measure a subject’s inclination toward sociableness and activeness in the E scale. The item clique corresponding to the N scale seemed to measure emotional unstableness of an individual. The item pairs and cliques found above carry important implications for practice. The results suggest that some of the items in the questionnaire are over-related and may even be redundant. 24