Robust Exploratory Factor Analysis

Robust exploratory factor analysis discovers the latent factor structure of a set of items using estimation methods that are resistant to outliers and violations of multivariate normality. It applies the same measurement model as standard EFA but replaces classical covariance estimation with robust counterparts — such as minimum covariance determinant or iteratively reweighted least squares — so that a small fraction of atypical cases cannot distort the recovered factor loadings.