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A Factor Simplicity Index

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2025

Urbano Lorenzo-Seva
Urbano Lorenzo-Seva*
Affiliation:
Universitat Rovira i Virgili
*
Requests for reprints should be sent to Urbano Lorenzo-Seva, Universitat Rovira i Virgili, Ctra de Valls s/n, 43007 – Taxragona, SPAIN. E-Mail: uls@fcep.urv.es
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Abstract

We propose an index for assessing the degree of factor simplicity in the context of principal components and exploratory factor analysis. The new index, which is called Loading Simplicity, is based on the idea that the communality of each variable should be related to few components, or factors, so that the loadings in each variable are either zero or as far from zero as possible. This index does not depend on the scale of the factors, and its maximum and minimum are only related to the degree of simplicity in the loading matrix. The aim of the index is to enable the degree of simplicity in loading matrices to be compared.

Keywords

factor simplicitysimple structureexploratory factor analysisfactor rotationloading matrix comparison
Type
Articles
Information
Psychometrika , Volume 68 , Issue 1 , March 2003 , pp. 49 - 60
Copyright
Copyright © 2003 The Psychometric Society

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Footnotes

The author would like to thank the review team for their insights and recommendations. This work was supported by a grant SEC2001-3821-C05-C02 from the Spanish Ministry of Science and Technology.

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