1: Actually, our first question is usually whether the initial EFA got it right in asserting there were several “first-order” factors, or whether the analysis should have concluded there were fewer—or one—factors. [return]

2: This sort of question can spawn endless debate among scholars, and the literature is replete with examples of this type of debate. In our opinion, these (often vitriolic) debates fester because of the exploratory, volatile, and nonreplicable nature of these analyses. If authors would quickly replicate or (ideally) move to confirmatory analyses, these debates would be less apt to erupt as there are clear ways to test competing hypotheses. [return]

3: We tend to recommend Barbara Byrne’s excellent reference on structural equation modeling (Byrne, 2010) for readers interested in CFA/SEM and higher-order factor analysis in a confirmatory context. [return]

4: This is not, in our mind, a reason to decide to use PCA, by the way. [return]