A Note on Using Eigenvalues in Dimensionality Assessment

The dimensionality of a set of items is important for scale development. In practice, tools that make use of eigenvalues are often used to assess dimensionality. Parallel analysis is featured here as it is becoming an increasingly popular method for assessing the number of dimensions, and computatio...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inPractical assessment, research & evaluation Vol. 22; no. 7; pp. 7 - 16
Main Authors Zopluoglu, Cengiz, Davenport, Ernest C
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published College Park Practical Assessment, Research and Evaluation, Inc 01.09.2017
Center for Educational Assessment
Subjects
Correlation
Eigenvalues
Factor Analysis
Factor Structure
Item Response Theory
Multidimensional Scaling
Simulation
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Summary:The dimensionality of a set of items is important for scale development. In practice, tools that make use of eigenvalues are often used to assess dimensionality. Parallel analysis is featured here as it is becoming an increasingly popular method for assessing the number of dimensions, and computational tools have recently been made available which will likely increase its use by practitioners. The current paper argues that methods that use eigenvalues to ascertain the number of factors may perform poorly under certain conditions, particularly for increasing levels of variable complexity and/or inter-factor correlations in the latent structure. A simulation study and an example are offered to substantiate this assertion.
ISSN:1531-7714
1531-7714
DOI:10.7275/zh1k-zk32