Reliability and 8 Factor Analysisy

PRESENTED BY GROUP 3

Types of Reliability
Internal consistency correlations amongst multiple items in a factor e.g., Cronbachs Alpha (a) Test-retest reliability correlation between time 1 & time 2 e.g., Product-moment correlation (r)

Reliabilities LEQ Example

What is factor analysis?

Factor analysis (and principal component analysis, which you know already from MANOVA) is a technique for identifying groups or clusters of variables underlying a set of measures. Those variables are called 'factors', or 'latent variables' since they are not directly observable, e.g., 'intelligence'. A 'latent variable' is a variable that cannot be directly measured, but is assumed to be related to several variables that can be measured.

What is factor analysis used for?

Factor analysis has 3 main uses: To understand the structure of a set of variables, e.g., intelligence To construct a questionnaire to measure an underlying variable To reduce a large data set to a more manageable size

Factor Analysis
Data reduction tool Removes redundancy or duplication from a set of correlated variables Represents correlated variables with a smaller set of derived variables. Factors are formed that are relatively independent of one another. Two types of variables: latent variables: factors observed variables

Steps in Factor Analysis

Factor analysis usually proceeds in four steps:
1st Step: the correlation matrix for all variables is computed 2nd Step: Factor extraction 3rd Step: Factor rotation 4th Step: Make final decisions about the number of underlying factors

Some Applications of Factor Analysis

1. Identification of Underlying Factors:
clusters variables into homogeneous sets creates new variables (i.e. factors) allows us to gain insight to categories

2. Screening of Variables:
identifies groupings to allow us to select one variable to represent many useful in regression (recall collinearity)

3. Summary:
Allows us to describe many variables using a few factors

4. Clustering of objects:
Helps us to put objects (people) into categories depending on their factor scores

One of the primary goals of factor analysis is often to identify a measurement model for a latent variable

This includes identifying the items to include in the model identifying how many factors there are in the latent variable identifying which items are associated with which factors

Standard Result
Variable | Factor1 Factor2 | -------------+--------------------+ notenjoy | -0.3118 0.5870 | notmiss | -0.3498 0.6155 | desireexceed | -0.1919 0.8381 | personalpe~m | -0.2269 0.7345 | importants~l | 0.5682 -0.1748 | groupunited | 0.8184 -0.1212 | responsibi~y | 0.9233 -0.1968 | interact | 0.6238 -0.2227 | problemshelp | 0.8817 -0.2060 | notdiscuss | -0.0308 0.4165 | workharder | -0.1872 0.5647 | -----------------------------------

How to interpret?
We were able to derive two factors from the 11 items. The first factor is defined as teamwork. The second factor is defined as personal competitive nature . These two factors describe 72% of the variance among the items

Variable | Factor1 Factor2 | -------------+--------------------+ notenjoy | -0.3118 0.5870 | notmiss | -0.3498 0.6155 | desireexceed | -0.1919 0.8381 | personalpe~m | -0.2269 0.7345 | importants~l | 0.5682 -0.1748 | groupunited | 0.8184 -0.1212 | responsibi~y | 0.9233 -0.1968 | interact | 0.6238 -0.2227 | problemshelp | 0.8817 -0.2060 | notdiscuss | -0.0308 0.4165 | workharder | -0.1872 0.5647 |
-----------------------------------

High loadings are highlighted in blue.

HYPERLINK EXCEL

HYPERLINK

HYPERLINK SPS

Reliability analysis on SPSS

We will determine reliability for each of the 4 subscales from orthogonal rotation separately:
Factor 1 2 3 4 Subscale of SAQ Fear of computers Fear of statistics Fear of mathematics Items 6,7,10,13,14,15,18 1,3,4,5,12,14,10,21 8,11,17

Fear of negative peer evalution 2,9,19,22,23

Reliability analysis on SPSS:

subscale 1: Fear of computers
Transfer all items of 1 factor to the Item's window, here: Subscale 1 (Items 6,7,10,13,14,15,18). Proceed alike with the other 3 subscales

Leave the default setting for model: Cronbach's Alpha.

Tick 'List Item Lables'

Reliability analysis on SPSS

'Scale if item deleted' tests whether alpha decreases if one item is deleted. In a reliable test, this should not matter much. We therefore expect still a high alpha (>.8) if an item is delete

For a basic realibility check, just tick 'Scale if item deleted' and 'correlations'

Click OK

8 Factor Analysis

Instrument
Psychological testing

Initial pool: 330 items

Related school, social, family and leisure activities, etc. Three parts: interests, abilities and temperaments

Step 1:
Designing draft instrument 330 ite33333 330 items (school, social, family and

leisure activities)

Step 2:
Validating draft instrument

Item validation by

49 psychologists/ career counsellors

Results: 66 items were deleted

Step 3:
Pilot study

264 remaining items were randomized

Sample: 13 students Minor changes in language made

Step 4:
1st survey: Test-retest Sample size: 54 students Time interval: 4 weeks Reliability coefficient: 0.67 33 items were further discarded with item-total correlation < 0.4 Remaining 231 items Reliability coefficient: 0.72

Step 5:
2nd survey: Identifying personal attributes

Sample: 1,217 students

Factor analysis 8 interpretable factors (attributes) were identified

Step 6:
3rd survey: Verification of 8 attributes

Sample size: 764 students Factor analysis Same 8 attributes identified 132 items retained

Alpha reliability: 0.962

Step 7:
Determining minimum desirability ratings

42 Course Coordinators 115 OUHK programmes Minimum entry requirements

Based on 8 personal attributes

Method: Job analysis

Step 8:
Developing the Online MAPP

Java programming language

UNIX (Solaris) Platform

Oracle 8i database

Data exported into Excel format

The MAPP Inventory

132 items, 8 personal attributes Influential Social Helping Explorative Technological Logical Reflective Enterprising

THANK YOU