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A comparison of factor analytic techniques

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Abstract

Statistical properties of several methods for obtaining estimates of factor loadings and procedures for estimating the number of factors are compared by means of random sampling experiments. The effect of increasing the ratio of the number of observed variables to the number of factors, and of increasing sample size, is examined. A description is given of a procedure which makes use of the Bartlett decomposition of a Wishart matrix to generate random correlation matrices.

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Browne, M.W. A comparison of factor analytic techniques. Psychometrika 33, 267–334 (1968). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02289327

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