Название: A Step-by-Step Guide to Exploratory Factor Analysis with R and RStudio
Автор: Marley W. Watkins
Издательство: Routledge
Год: 2021
Страниц: 199
Язык: английский
Формат: pdf (true)
Размер: 28.0 MB

This is a concise, easy to use, step-by-step guide for applied researchers conducting exploratory factor analysis (EFA) using the open source software R.

In this book, Dr. Watkins systematically reviews each decision step in EFA with screen shots of R and RStudio code, and recommends evidence-based best practice procedures. This is an eminently applied, practical approach with few or no formulas and is aimed at readers with little to no mathematical background. Dr. Watkins maintains an accessible tone throughout and uses minimal jargon and formula to help facilitate grasp of the key issues users will face while applying EFA, along with how to implement, interpret, and report results. Copious scholarly references and quotations are included to support the reader in responding to editorial reviews.

For effective use of R, it is important to understand some of its organizational principles. Basically, R is a computer language with pre-compiled functions and routines that are collected into packages that perform a variety of graphical and statistical functions. As previously noted, R is a command line system. The R Console panel of RStudio (lower left quadrant) is where R commands are entered and where the output from those commands is displayed. Objects are anything created in R, such as a variable, group of variables, correlation matrix, dataset, results from a statistical analysis, etc. There is a specific vocabulary used to identify object types, for example, matrices, data frames, lists, and vectors. Matrices are similar to the familiar correlation matrix with rows and columns containing homogeneous elements, lists are similar to any list of letters and/or numbers, and data frames are similar to a spreadsheet with variables in the columns and participants in the rows.