مقایسهٔ روش‌ها

	تحلیل عاملی تأییدی (CFA)	آلفای کرونباخ (تحلیل پایایی)	تحلیل عاملی اکتشافی (EFA)	تحلیل مؤلفه‌های اصلی	مدل‌سازی معادلات ساختاری (SEM)
حوزه	آمار	آمار	آمار	یادگیری ماشین	آمار
خانواده	Latent structure	Latent structure	Latent structure	Machine learning	Latent structure
سال پیدایش	1969	1951	—	2002	1970
پدیدآور	Karl Jöreskog	Lee J. Cronbach	—	Jolliffe, I.T. (textbook); Pearson & Hotelling (origins)	Karl Jöreskog (LISREL framework, 1970s)
نوع	Confirmatory latent variable model	Reliability / internal consistency coefficient	Latent variable / dimension reduction	Unsupervised dimensionality reduction	Latent variable / causal modeling
منبع بنیادین	Brown, T. A. (2015). Confirmatory Factor Analysis for Applied Research (2nd ed.). The Guilford Press. ISBN: 978-1462515363	Cronbach, L. J. (1951). Coefficient alpha and the internal structure of tests. Psychometrika, 16(3), 297–334.	Fabrigar, L. R., Wegener, D. T., MacCallum, R. C. & Strahan, E. J. (1999). Evaluating the use of exploratory factor analysis in psychological research. Psychological Methods, 4(3), 272–299.	Jolliffe, I.T. (2002). Principal Component Analysis (2nd ed.). Springer.	Hair, J. F., Black, W. C., Babin, B. J. & Anderson, R. E. (2019). Multivariate Data Analysis (8th ed.). Cengage Learning. ISBN: 978-1473756540
نام‌های دیگر	Doğrulayıcı Faktör Analizi (CFA), confirmatory factor analysis, measurement model	coefficient alpha, alpha reliability, internal consistency reliability, Güvenilirlik Analizi (Cronbach Alpha)	common factor analysis, açımlayıcı faktör analizi, factor analysis	Temel Bileşenler Analizi (PCA), PCA, principal components analysis, Karhunen-Loève transform	Yapısal Eşitlik Modellemesi (SEM), structural equation modelling, covariance structure analysis, latent variable modeling
مرتبط	4	4	4	3	5
خلاصه	Confirmatory factor analysis tests whether a researcher-specified factor structure fits the observed data. Formalised by Karl Jöreskog in 1969, it is the measurement-model step within structural equation modelling and is the standard tool for validating the factorial structure of scales and questionnaires before comparing groups or estimating latent relationships.	Cronbach's alpha is a coefficient of internal consistency that quantifies the degree to which a set of items on a scale measures the same underlying construct. Introduced by Lee J. Cronbach in 1951, it remains the most widely reported reliability index in social-science, health, and educational research.	Exploratory factor analysis reduces a large set of observed variables into a smaller number of latent common factors. It is widely used in scale development and psychometrics to uncover the dimensional structure that underlies a set of correlated items, without specifying that structure in advance.	Principal Component Analysis (PCA) is an unsupervised dimensionality-reduction method — given its modern textbook treatment by Ian Jolliffe (2002) — that compresses high-dimensional data into fewer dimensions while preserving the maximum possible variance. It re-expresses correlated variables as a small set of uncorrelated principal components ordered by how much of the data's variation each one captures.	Structural equation modeling is a multivariate statistical framework that simultaneously estimates a measurement model — relating observed indicators to latent constructs — and a structural model specifying directional or reciprocal relationships among those constructs. Rooted in the LISREL tradition developed by Karl Jöreskog in the 1970s, SEM is the standard tool for testing complex theoretical models in the social, behavioural, and management sciences.