About This Book

Purpose

This book is designed to present a modern overview of best practices in exploratory factor analysis. We present these concepts from an applied, reader-friendly perspective, guiding you through many different aspects of factor analysis and presenting evidence-based recommendations about how to get the most from your analysis (and how to present it to others clearly).

Is This Book for You?

Factor analysis is used in many disciplines, for many purposes. If you use SAS and also use factor analysis, this book will help you choose options that are defensible and help you meet your goals. If you have never used factor analysis and want to learn, this book is also written for you! We guide you through concepts and their application gently, using minimal technical jargon, and we suggest ways to think about the results that reflect modern practices.

Prerequisites

We wrote this book expecting readers to have a basic working knowledge of SAS and basic knowledge of statistics fundamentals. We do not assume you can do matrix algebra in your sleep, that you already know what an eigenvalue is, or that you know the binary language of moisture vaporators. We do, however, assume that most readers understand basic data manipulation in SAS, the DATA step, and at least a few procedures (e.g., MEANS, SORT, FREQ).

Scope of This Book

This book is designed to cover everything you need to know about exploratory factor analysis, and some closely related constructs such as reliability and replicability. Our goal was to stay focused on this one topic, as it is complex and confusing, with many options and steps. We chose, therefore, not to cover related topics like confirmatory factor analysis, construction and validation of scales, latent variable modeling such as structural equation modeling, and other measurement methodologies (for example, item response theory or Rasch measurement).

About the Examples

Software Used to Develop the Book's Content

SAS 9.4 was used for this book.

Example Code and Data

To access the book’s example code and data, visit the authors’ page at http://support.sas.com/publishing/authors. Select the name of one of the authors. Then, look for the book cover, and select Example Code and Data.
If you are unable to access the code through the website, send email to [email protected].
This book is compatible with SAS® University Edition.
If you are using SAS® University Edition you can use the code and data sets provided with this book. This helpful link will get you started: http://support.sas.com/publishing/import_ue.data.html.

Output and Graphics Used in This Book

All output in this book was generated using SAS.

Exercise Solutions

Exercises are presented at the end of each chapter. The data sets that are used for these exercises can be found on the SAS Press book website, along with syntax from the chapter that can be helpful in solving the exercises. All data, syntax, and promised reader-oriented materials can also be found on Jason Osborne’s website at http://jwosborne.com

Additional Resources

Although this book illustrates many analyses regularly performed in businesses across industries, questions specific to your aims and issues might arise. To fully support you, SAS Institute and SAS Press offer you the following help resources:
  • For questions about topics covered in this book, contact the author through SAS Press:
  • For questions about topics in or beyond the scope of this book, post queries to the relevant SAS Support Communities at https://communities.sas.com/welcome.
  • SAS Institute maintains a comprehensive website with up-to-date information. One page that is particularly useful to both the novice and the seasoned SAS user is the Knowledge Base. Search for relevant notes in the “Samples and SAS Notes” section of the Knowledge Base at http://support.sas.com/resources.
  • Registered SAS users or their organizations can access SAS Customer Support at http://support.sas.com. Here you can pose specific questions to SAS Customer Support; under Support, click Submit a Problem. You will need to provide an email address to which replies can be sent, identify your organization, and provide a customer site number or license information. This information can be found in your SAS logs.

Keep in Touch

We look forward to hearing from you. We invite questions, comments, and concerns. If you want to contact us about a specific book, please include the book title in your correspondence.

To Contact the Author through SAS Press

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