השוואת שיטות

	ניתוח גורמים סדרתי חקרני	ניתוח גורמים מאשר (CFA)
תחום	פסיכומטריה	פסיכומטריה
משפחה	Latent structure	Latent structure
שנת המקור	1978–1984	1969
הוגה השיטה	Bengt Muthén	Karl Gustav Jöreskog
סוג	Latent variable / dimension reduction	Hypothesis-testing latent variable model
מקור מכונן	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.	Jöreskog, K. G. (1969). A general approach to confirmatory maximum likelihood factor analysis. Psychometrika, 34(2), 183–202.
כינויים	ordinal factor analysis, polychoric EFA, categorical EFA, EFA for ordinal data	CFA, confirmatory FA, measurement model, restricted factor analysis
קשורות	5	4
תקציר	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.	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.