Reliability Alpha, Principle Component Analysis, and Exploratory Factor Analysis

Abstract

In this chapter, we will discuss the issues involved in building measures or scales. We focus on two types of analysis: (1) the measurement of reliability Reliabilitywith Cronbach's alpha and (2) the verification of unidimensionality using factor analysisFactor Analysis. In this chapter, we concentrate on exploratory factor analysis and we only introduce the notion of confirmatory factor analysis in this chapter. The next chapter develops in detail the confirmatory factor analytic model and examines the measures of convergent and discriminant validity.