Latent structureScale / measurement

Ordinal Exploratory Factor Analysis

Ordinal exploratory factor analysis discovers latent factors underlying a set of ordinal items — typically Likert scales — by computing polychoric correlations among the items and then applying a weighted least squares estimator. It avoids the distortions that arise when continuous EFA methods are naively applied to ordered categorical responses.

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Sources

  1. Flora, D. B. & Curran, P. J. (2004). An empirical evaluation of alternative methods of estimation for confirmatory factor analysis with ordinal data. Psychological Methods, 9(4), 466–491. DOI: 10.1037/1082-989X.9.4.466
  2. Muthén, B. (1984). A general structural equation model with dichotomous, ordered categorical, and continuous latent variable indicators. Psychometrika, 49(1), 115–132. DOI: 10.1007/BF02294210

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Referenced by

ScholarGateOrdinal EFA (Ordinal Exploratory Factor Analysis). Retrieved 2026-06-04 from https://scholargate.app/en/psychometrics/ordinal-exploratory-factor-analysis