Hostname: page-component-599cfd5f84-v8j7l Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-01-07T08:22:53.422Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Some Comparisons of the Multiple-Factor and the Bi-Factor Methods of Analysis

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2025

Frances Swineford
Frances Swineford*
Affiliation:
The University of Chicago
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Bi-factor and multiple-factor analyses of the same data are compared in two respects. First, two criteria are suggested for determining when the factorization is adequate. This problem being more acute for the centroid method than for the bi-factor method, the latter is used primarily for comparison only. It is shown also that the omission from the simple structure of entries smaller than .10 yields a pattern which is a poorer fit to the original correlations than is the bi-factor pattern. Second, the second-order general factor obtained from the intercorrelations of the primaries is found to be highly correlated with the general factor of the bi-factor pattern.

Type
Original Paper
Information
Psychometrika , Volume 6 , Issue 6 , December 1941 , pp. 375 - 382
Copyright
Copyright © 1941 The Psychometric Society

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

*

L. L. Thurstone and Thelma Gwinn Thurstone. Factorial Studies of Intelligence. Psychometric Monographs, No. 2. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1941.

†

These factors have been called “simple factors,” to distinguish them from “primary” factors,” in Karl J. Holzinger, assisted by Frances Swineford and Harry Harman, Student Manual of Factor Analysis. pp. 68-73. Chicago: Statistical Laboratory, Department of Education, University of Chicago, 1937.

References

* L. L. Thurstone. Primary Mental Abilities, pp. 65 ff. Psychometric Monographs, No. 1. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1938.

* Frances Swineford and Karl J. Holzinger. A Study in Factor Analysis: The Reliability of Bi-factors and Their Relation to Other Measures. Supplementary Educational Monograph. Chicago: Department of Education, University of Chicago, 1942 (in press).

* Factorial Studies of Intelligence, p, 35.

† Ibid. Table 4, p. 31.

‡ Karl J. Holzinger and Harry H. Harman. Factor Annalysis, pp. 386-89. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1941.