SPSS does not include confirmatory factor analysis but those who are interested could take a look at AMOS. This is known as “ confirmatory factor analysis”. In this case, I'm trying to confirm a model by fitting it to my data.
SPSS 22 TUTORIAL PPT SOFTWARE
Now I could ask my software if these correlations are likely, given my theoretical factor model. Right, so after measuring questions 1 through 9 on a simple random sample of respondents, I computed this correlation matrix. So if my factor model is correct, I could expect the correlations to follow a pattern as shown below. However, questions 1 and 4 -measuring possibly unrelated traits- will not necessarily correlate.
![spss 22 tutorial ppt spss 22 tutorial ppt](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/SL2bZXfWQls/hqdefault.jpg)
The same reasoning goes for questions 4, 5 and 6: if they really measure “the same thing” they'll probably correlate highly.
![spss 22 tutorial ppt spss 22 tutorial ppt](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/_nlJSuvp1mg/maxresdefault.jpg)
Now, if questions 1, 2 and 3 all measure numeric IQ, then the Pearson correlations among these items should be substantial: respondents with high numeric IQ will typically score high on all 3 questions and reversely.
![spss 22 tutorial ppt spss 22 tutorial ppt](https://thumbs.slideserve.com/1_995563.jpg)
For measuring these, we often try to write multiple questions that -at least partially- reflect such factors. Such “underlying factors” are often variables that are difficult to measure such as IQ, depression or extraversion. SPSS Factor Analysis – Beginners Tutorial report this ad By Ruben Geert van den Berg under Basics & Factor Analysisįactor analysis is a statistical technique for identifying which underlying factors are measured by a (much larger) number of observed variables.