The FACTOR procedure is used to conduct EFA in SAS. You must be careful when conducting an EFA in SAS because the FACTOR procedure is also used to conduct PCA—if you do not specify an extraction method or if you just select one of the extraction options, you could end up with a PCA and not an EFA! Below is a brief summary of the syntax and the basic options available. We will delve into further details and options in the chapters to come.

PROC FACTOR   DATA = dataset-name               
         NFACTORS = number-of-factors-to-retain
         METHOD = factor-extraction-method
         ROTATE = rotation-method;
   VAR variables-to-include;
               RUN;

In the above syntax, you would specify all of the arguments that are highlighted. You would identify the data set to use for the analysis, tell SAS the number of factors to extract (we will discuss the multi-step procedure for this in Chapter 3), specify one of the seven EFA extraction methods (note there are other options, but they are not EFA extraction methods), specify one of the 25 rotation methods, and list the variables to be factored. If you do not specify the NFACTORS, METHOD, and ROTATE options along with the VAR statement, then the analysis will still run, but SAS will use its default options of retaining the number of factors identified by the Kaiser Criterion, performing PCA extraction, not conducting rotation, and using all of the variables in the data set. Thus, it is best practice to get into the habit of specifying all of the options, even if you choose to use one of the methods that is a default, so that you do not accidentally overlook a key component of your analysis.

Let’s take a minute to quickly review the structure of the syntax above. Note that there is a semicolon on the end of some lines and not others. The placement of the semicolon is of insurmountable importance in SAS—if it is in the wrong place your code will not run and you will get errors galore! The semicolon signals the end of a statement and tells SAS how to parse what we are requesting. In the above syntax, we have a PROC FACTOR statement, a VAR statement, and a RUN statement. You will notice that there are some other key terms in the statement that allow users to specify the inputs for our analysis (e.g., DATA =, NFACTORS =). These are referred to as options within the statement. Finally, notice that the syntax starts with PROC FACTOR. This tells SAS that we are using the FACTOR procedure, and the following statements and options will specify the details of the analysis we would like to conduct. We will use this terminology throughout this book.

We hope most of what was just described was a review. If it was not, we recommend you first review some other excellent introductory texts to using SAS (e.g., Cody, 2007; Delwiche & Slaughter, 2012) before attempting to follow the syntax in this book. It is expected that readers have an understanding of basic data manipulation, the DATA step, and at least a few basic procedures (e.g., MEANS, SORT, FREQ). In addition, readers are encouraged to refer to the SAS documentation about PROC FACTOR for additional information throughout this book (SAS Institute Inc., 2015).