Factor analysis

Abstract

The goal of factor analysis ‘is to summarize the interrelationships among the variables in a concise but accurate manner as an aid in conceptualization’ (Gorsuch 1983: 2). There is an assumption that there are important, but hidden, constructs (factors) causing these relationships. A psychotherapist can observe a client looking restless and acting irritably, hear her complain that she is easily fatigued, that she is not sleeping well and she cannot concentrate. These symptoms commonly co-occur in some clients, but psychotherapists do not say that one symptom is causing the others. Instead, they say that there is a hidden, but important thing called anxiety that is producing all of them. Here anxiety is the unseen factor that is causing the things we can actually observe, the items, to correlate.