Little is known about levels of personal growth attributed by students to typical college life experiences. This paper documents two studies of student self-reported and posttraumatic growth and compares growth levels across populations. Both studies measure student attributions of cause to academic and non-academic experiences, respectively. It…

Reviews the factor analytic studies done on the 1981 Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale-Revised (WAIS-R) standardization sample and various patient samples. Concludes that a three-factor solution appears to provide a source of hypotheses about an individual's or a select sample's unique abilities and weaknesses worthy of further exploration.…

A factor replication procedure (FACTOREP) was evaluated using four psychometrically equivalent synthetic correlation matrices containing an imposed three-subscale structure. Comparisons of the structure revealed by two, three, four, and nine-factor rotations using the FACTOREP showed that only the three factor solutions were replicable across all…

The present study compares the performance of phi coefficients and tetrachorics along two dimensions of factor recovery in binary data. These dimensions are (1) accuracy of nontrivial factor identifications; and (2) factor structure recovery given a priori knowledge of the correct number of factors to rotate. (Author/LMO)

The Little Jiffy" consists of principal components analysis and varimax rotation of all components with eigenvalues greater than one. (DG)

The paper is a critique of the traditional mode of interpreting factor analyses; it is not a criticism of factor analysis per se. Instead, the author proposes a statistical procedure based upon stepwise regression (SRP). The traditional mode focuses on the largest factor loadings (FL). A factor is both described and named by these heavily weighted…

Procedures for assessing the invariance of factors across data sets often use the least squares criterion, which appears to be too restrictive. Tucker's coefficient of congruence is proposed as an alternative. A method that maximizes the sum of the coefficients of congruence between two matrices of loadings is presented. (Author/JKS)

Meredith's method of extracting a factorially invariant solution is adapted to longitudinal settings. An explorational estimation procedure is presented which attempts to identify the longitudinal factor components of an across occasion variance-covariance matrix. Data from 166 subjects on the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale is used to…

The "factor" analyses published by Schultz, Kaye, and Hoyer (1980) confused component and factor analysis and led to unwarranted conclusions. The principal factors method yields two factors which support the a priori expectation of a difference between intelligence tasks and spontaneous flexibility tasks. (Author/RD)

This paper reviews recent work in factor analysis of categorical variables. Emphasis is on the generalized least squares solution. A section on maximum likelihood solution focuses on extensions of the classical model, especially the normal case. Many of the recent developments have taken place within this context, and it provides a unified…

This paper examines interaction in a school class through the factor-analytical P-technique, considers the behavior of the factor scores in combination with certain other variables included in the interaction matrix, explores the formation of homogeneous groups of lessons in a grouping analysis based on the factor scores, and compares this latter…

Working from a common data base and hypothesized model, this paper demonstrates and compares the EQS and LISREL computer program strategies in the analysis of a second-order factor model. Program similarities and differences are noted with respect to: (1) preliminary analyses of the data; (2) treatment of data that are not multivariately normal;…

To assess the effects of correlated abilities on test characteristics, and to explore the effects of correlated abilities on the use of a multidimensional item response theory model which does not explicitly account for such a correlation, two tests were constructed. One had two relatively unidimensional subsets of items, the other had all…

A Monte Carlo investigation of simplex fitting as a method of determining the dimensionality of binary data matrices was conducted. Examination of the fit of correlation matrices with a known factor structure to correlation matrices that represent the perfect simplex shows that simplex fitting is a feasible approach under some circumstances. (SLD)

Several multivariate statistical methodologies have been proposed to ensure objective and quantitative evaluation of the multitrait-multimethod matrix. The paper examines the performance of confirmatory factor analysis and covariance component models. It is shown, both empirically and formally, that confirmatory factor analysis is not a reliable…