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Home > Statistics Every Writer Should Know > The Stats Board > Discusssion

factor analysis
Message posted by Ricky on April 14, 2000 at 12:00 AM (ET)

Using SPSS, i can't understand the figures taht I get. Should the variable that are to be grouped into factors jump out at me from the screen. How can I tell which ones to group?? HELP


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Re: factor analysis
Message posted by Deirdre on April 20, 2000 at 12:00 AM (ET)

When you request the factor analysis there's a place where you can choose to suppress values under .4 (you can change it to whatever you want but .4 is the default). If you click this option (I think it's under the options tab) then your matrices will have fewer numbers in them (gets rid of the noise so to speak). Only the big loadings will show up. When you go to your pattern matrix you should be able to easily tell which variables load highly onto a single factor and should be grouped together. If some of your variables don't show up at all you might need to change the default to less than .4



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