[R] Retrieve "raw scores" in factor analysis

Roni Kobrosly slyron84 at gmail.com
Mon Jan 17 23:25:20 CET 2011


I'm working with a data collected through complex survey design. My goal is to conduct a factor analysis to extract two a priori, known factors, and to get factor scores for these factors. Unfortunately, the "svyfactanal" procedure from the Survey package does not allow for the calculation of either Thompson regression scores or Bartlett scores. 

So, I found several sources that say one can simply sum "raw scores." I found this quote from this pdf file (http://pareonline.net/pdf/v14n20.pdf): 

"One of the simplest ways to estimate factor scores for each individual involves summing raw scores corresponding to all items loading on a factor (Comrey & Lee, 1992). If an item yields a negative factor loading, the raw score of the item is subtracted rather than added in the computations because the item is negatively related to the factor. For this method (as well as for the following non-refined methods) average scores could be computed to retain the scale metric, which may allow for easier interpretation."

I know that the SPSS factor analysis procedure gives you raw scores. Is there a way to obtain these from either the factanal or svyfactanal function?

Thanks


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