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Main Authors: Tuazon, Justin Philip, Abubo, Gia Mizrane, Olea, Joemari
Format: Preprint
Published: 2024
Subjects:
Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2409.11525
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author Tuazon, Justin Philip
Abubo, Gia Mizrane
Olea, Joemari
author_facet Tuazon, Justin Philip
Abubo, Gia Mizrane
Olea, Joemari
contents Factor analysis is a way to characterize the relationships between many manifest variables in terms of a smaller number of latent variables (i.e., factors). Particularly, in exploratory factor analysis (EFA), researchers consider various factor models by exploiting rotational indeterminacy to uncover underlying structures and identify factors. Generally, the success of EFA lies with the factor models' interpretabilities, which can be difficult to achieve or measure. To help address this problem, a new interpretability criterion is constructed, as well as a rotation method based on it that is called pairwise target rotation or priorimax. Pairwise target rotation allows for an intuitive yet flexible way of incorporating arbitrary prior information, such as semantics, in factor rotations, which can help the researcher perform EFA more effectively. The implementation of the proposed method is written in Python 3 and is made available together with several helper functions through the package interpretablefa on the Python Package Index. A demonstration of the method is provided using data on Experiences in Close Relationships Scale obtained from the Open-Source Psychometrics Project.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2409_11525
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Pairwise Target Rotation for Factor Models
Tuazon, Justin Philip
Abubo, Gia Mizrane
Olea, Joemari
Methodology
Factor analysis is a way to characterize the relationships between many manifest variables in terms of a smaller number of latent variables (i.e., factors). Particularly, in exploratory factor analysis (EFA), researchers consider various factor models by exploiting rotational indeterminacy to uncover underlying structures and identify factors. Generally, the success of EFA lies with the factor models' interpretabilities, which can be difficult to achieve or measure. To help address this problem, a new interpretability criterion is constructed, as well as a rotation method based on it that is called pairwise target rotation or priorimax. Pairwise target rotation allows for an intuitive yet flexible way of incorporating arbitrary prior information, such as semantics, in factor rotations, which can help the researcher perform EFA more effectively. The implementation of the proposed method is written in Python 3 and is made available together with several helper functions through the package interpretablefa on the Python Package Index. A demonstration of the method is provided using data on Experiences in Close Relationships Scale obtained from the Open-Source Psychometrics Project.
title Pairwise Target Rotation for Factor Models
topic Methodology
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2409.11525