krisscot wrote: > > I hope that someone can help clarify some interesting output I came across > from a Factor Analysis that I just conducted. I have a 24-item instrument > that I used Principal Axis Factoring for. By default, SPSS suggested that > there were 5 factors based on the eigenvalue greater than 1 rule. I then > tried to run the same procedure but altered the number of factors to be > extracted to 3. The eigenvalues for the 3-factor solution were not the > same values as the first 3 eigenvalues from the 5-factor solution (all > values are based on prerotation). The values are close but shouldn't they > be identical given that factors are extracted ortogonally? Thanks! > > Kris >

I am not an expert on factor analysis, but what I have read suggests that the "eigenvalues > 1" rule (aka Kaiser's criterion) is not a particularly good one much of the time. See the following article for, for example.

http://www.people.ku.edu/~preacher/pubs/preacher_maccallum_2003.pdf

HTH.

----- -- Bruce Weaver bweaver@lakeheadu.ca http://sites.google.com/a/lakeheadu.ca/bweaver/

"When all else fails, RTFM."

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