The influence of communality,factor strength,and loading size on the sampling characteristics of factor loadings

A Monte Carlo approach is employed in determining whether or not certain variables produce systematic effects on the sampling variability of individual factor loadings. A number of sample correlation matrices were generated from a specified population, factored, and transformed to a least-squares fit to the population values. Influences of factor strength, communality and loading size are discussed in relation to the statistics summarizing the results of the above procedures. Influences producing biased estimators of the population values are also discussed.This study was supported in part by NSF Grant GB 4230. Computing assistance was obtained from the Western Data Processing Center and Health Sciences Computing Facility, UCLA, sponsored by NIH Grant FR-3.