مقایسهٔ روش‌ها

	تحلیل عاملی تأییدی (CFA)	تحلیل عاملی اکتشافی (EFA)	تحلیل میانجیگری	مدل‌سازی چندسطحی
حوزه	روان‌سنجی	آمار	آمار	آمار پژوهش
خانواده	Latent structure	Latent structure	Hypothesis test	Process / pipeline
سال پیدایش	1969	—	1986	1992
پدیدآور	Karl Gustav Jöreskog	—	Baron & Kenny	Anthony Bryk and Stephen Raudenbush
نوع	Hypothesis-testing latent variable model	Latent variable / dimension reduction	Indirect effects / path test	Method
منبع بنیادین	Jöreskog, K. G. (1969). A general approach to confirmatory maximum likelihood factor analysis. Psychometrika, 34(2), 183–202.	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.	Baron, R. M. & Kenny, D. A. (1986). The moderator-mediator variable distinction in social psychological research. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 51(6), 1173–1182.	Bryk, A. S., & Raudenbush, S. W. (1992). Hierarchical Linear Models: Applications and Data Analysis Methods. SAGE Publications.
نام‌های دیگر	CFA, confirmatory FA, measurement model, restricted factor analysis	common factor analysis, açımlayıcı faktör analizi, factor analysis	indirect effects analysis, path-based mediation, PROCESS macro mediation, Aracılık Analizi (Mediation / PROCESS)	HLM, mixed-effects models, random effects models, MLM
مرتبط	4	4	5	3
خلاصه	Confirmatory factor analysis tests a researcher-specified factor structure against observed data. Unlike exploratory approaches, the researcher decides in advance which indicators load on which latent factor, and the model is evaluated by how closely the implied covariance matrix reproduces the sample covariance matrix. CFA is central to scale validation, construct validity assessment, and measurement invariance testing.	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.	Mediation analysis is a statistical procedure that tests whether the effect of an independent variable X on an outcome Y operates wholly or partly through a third variable M, called the mediator. Formalised by Baron and Kenny in 1986, it decomposes the total effect of X on Y into a direct path (c′) and an indirect path (a × b), quantifying how much of the relationship is carried by the mediating mechanism.	Multilevel modeling (also called hierarchical linear modeling, mixed-effects modeling) is a statistical framework for analyzing data organized in nested or clustered structures—students within schools, patients within hospitals, repeated measures within individuals. Developed by Bryk and Raudenbush (1992), it accounts for dependency among observations and partitions variance into levels (within-cluster and between-cluster), enabling valid inference and revealing context effects. Essential in education, medicine, organizational research, and any field where data have natural hierarchies.