The call to perform factor analysis on a set of variables in R
is: where “x” is a dataframe containing the appropriate
variables, and “factors” is the number of factors to be
extracted. socres=”…” and rotation=”…” are optional, and varimax
is the default rotation. The factanal function doesn’t seem to
handle missing observations well, so it’s easier to create a new
dataframe based on your original, with the missing values
omitted: To view the summary of the factor analysis, simply type
the name of the object under which the analysis was saved. To
view the scores, use To view a scree plot, install the “psy”
package load it The above commands and options are only the very
basics. For more information, view the documentation for the
factanal function. For more information about factor analysis in
general, here is a nice nontechnical introduction.