IDCP 1 Flashcards
What is factor analysis?
A way of examining the relationship between variables to understand which ones are highly correlated
groups of correlated variables are called factors
aim is to simplify interrelated measures without losing information
What trade-off is present in factor analysis?W
explanatory power vs complexity
can explain more by adding different variables but that also means you have to account for more variables
What are the two types of factor analysis?
Exploratory
Confirmatory
What is the difference between exploratory and confirmatory FA?
exploratory is used to create a theory, confirmatory is used to check and evaluate it
exploratory involves creating a set of factors by using questionnaires
What are the uses of factor analysis?
theory development - forms the basis of lots of personality and intelligence theories
theory evaluation - testing a theory against a new data set e.g. different gender, race, social group
theory simplification - if there are two FAs, you can use them to test against each other
What are the stages of a FA?
measure variables calculate correlation matrix decide on factor extraction method decide on rotation method decide on number of factors interpret factors give factors names
What are loadings?
The correlation between the variables and the factor
What is a residual correlation?
The amount of information that a factor leaves unexplained
What method is used to interpret the factors that are significant in a factor analysis?
Factor rotation
What is communality and how is it represented mathematically?
the amount of variance in that variable accounted for by the number of factors extracted
h^2
What is the benefit of factor rotation?
means that each variable is only explained by one factor so you can separate them out
