Exploratory Factor Analysis with SAS

Summary

In this chapter we examined the concept of rotation — the purpose of rotation, what actually rotates, and several methods for rotation. We also examined the rotation results among each of our three example data sets. When the data was clear with a strong factor structure (as in examples1 and 2, with the engineering and SDQ data), almost any rotation will do a good job of clarifying the factor structure. We argued that oblique rotations performed slightly better given that the hypothetical factors were correlated in each of our data sets. However, if the factors were truly uncorrelated, the orthogonal and oblique rotations should identify very similar solutions. Finally, although the pattern and structure coefficients were reported, as ...