Are you still re-ordering your factor pattern by sorting columns in Excel? Well, do I have a tip or two for you. The cool thing about some large conferences is that even the things you hadn’t planned on attending can be worth while. For example, during one time slot, I didn’t have anything particular scheduled…
Where we left off, I had created some parcels and was going to do a factor analysis later. Now, it’s later. If you’ll recall, I had not find any items that correlated significantly with the food item that also made sense conceptually. For example, it correlated highly with attending church services but that didn’t really…
First of all, what are parcels? Not the little packages your grandma left on the table in the hall when she came back from shopping. Well, not only that. In factor analysis, parcels are simply the sum of a small number of items. I prefer using parcels when possible because both basic psychometric theory and…
Someone handed me a data set on acculturation that they had collected from a small sample size of 25 people. There was a good reason that the sample was small – think African-American presidents of companies over $100 million in sales or Latina neurosurgeons. Anyway, small sample, can’t reasonably expect to get 500 or 1,000…
My doctoral advisor, the late, great Dr. Eyman, used to tell me that my psychometric theory lectures were, A light treatment of a very serious subject. Hmph. Well, with all due respect to a truly wonderful mentor, I still have to state unequivocally that the majority of students when looking at a factor analysis for…
So, yesterday, if you were paying attention, we figured out WHY to do a factor analysis today’s post is about how. I’m using SAS Enterprise Guide because I had it open on my computer. Here is what the completed project looks like: Here is what I did, reading from the top — I opened…
Too often, when I look at the surveys some people design, I have the same thought as when I see my granddaughter with a lollipop bigger than her head – Just what exactly do you think that you are going to DO with that? The problem is that both may have metaphorically (or, in Eva’s…
Last week I wrote a bit about how to get an exploratory factor analysis using Mplus. The question now, is what does that output MEAN ? First, you just get some information on the programming statements or defaults that produced your output: INPUT READING TERMINATED NORMALLY Exploratory Factor Analysis ; SUMMARY OF ANALYSIS Number of…
Previously, I discussed how to do a confirmatory factor analysis with Mplus. What if you aren’t sure what variables should load on what factor? Then you are doing an exploratory factor analysis. Really, you should probably do the exploratory factor analysis first unless you have some very large body of research behind you saying that…
Being able to find SPSS in the start menu does not qualify you to run a multi-nomial logistic regression. This is the kind of comment statisticians find funny that leaves other people scratching their heads. The point is that it’s not that difficult to get output for some fairly complex statistical procedures. Let’s start with…