module 9 Path analysis

Question 1

collab (comparing cfa and efa)

Answer 1

HOW IS FACTORIAL ANALYSIS USED?
-provide evidence for the existence of psychological constructs & ways to measure them. eg scale development
-provide psychometric info on validity of psychological measures (esp Factorial validity)
HOW DOES FACTOR ANALYSIS WORK?
-Factor analysis looks for patterns of relationships b/n continuous variables. eg some items may not clump together, so maybe we should get rid of them or place them on a different Factor etc.
-the relationships are assessed using correlation coefficients ((r)
-correlations are a measure of how much 2 variables vary together (shared variance)
EXPLORATORY FACTOR ANALYSIS
-aims to reduce variables/items through extracting factors from the data, and revealing underlying patterns of the items across factors.
-the researcher/statistician actively obtains simple structure through various statistically-driven rules.
-uses spss, eigenvalues,scree plots, extraction methods etc.

Question 2

collab2

Answer 2

EFA lets us see how many factors and which items load on what factor.
Rotation is kind of like fine tuning spectacles in terms of does the item fit best on this factor or another factor.
CFA;
-we specify where each item should load acording to theory (ie may well have already done an EFA)
-confirms factorial validity in a new population,setting, or purpose.
-is one type of Structural Equation Model (SEM) (Path analysis is another type of SEM)
-uses AMOS