Confronta i metodi

	Analisi Fattoriale Confermatoria	Alpha di Cronbach (Analisi di Affidabilità)	Analisi Fattoriale Esplorativa (AFE)	Modellazione Lineare Gerarchica (HLM / Modellazione Multilivello)	Analisi delle Componenti Principali
Campo	Psicometria	Statistica	Statistica	Statistica	Apprendimento automatico
Famiglia	Latent structure	Latent structure	Latent structure	Hypothesis test	Machine learning
Anno di origine	1969	1951	—	1986	2002
Ideatore	Karl Jöreskog	Lee J. Cronbach	—	Raudenbush & Bryk (popularized); Goldstein (parallel development)	Jolliffe, I.T. (textbook); Pearson & Hotelling (origins)
Tipo	Measurement model / latent variable analysis	Reliability / internal consistency coefficient	Latent variable / dimension reduction	Parametric nested-data regression	Unsupervised dimensionality reduction
Fonte seminale	Brown, T. A. (2015). Confirmatory Factor Analysis for Applied Research (2nd ed.). 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.	Raudenbush, S.W. & Bryk, A.S. (2002). Hierarchical Linear Models: Applications and Data Analysis Methods (2nd ed.). Sage. ISBN: 978-0761919049	Jolliffe, I.T. (2002). Principal Component Analysis (2nd ed.). Springer.
Alias	Doğrulayıcı Faktör Analizi — Ölçek Doğrulama (CFA), confirmatory factor analysis, measurement model testing	coefficient alpha, alpha reliability, internal consistency reliability, Güvenilirlik Analizi (Cronbach Alpha)	common factor analysis, açımlayıcı faktör analizi, factor analysis	HLM, MLM, multilevel modeling, multilevel analysis	Temel Bileşenler Analizi (PCA), PCA, principal components analysis, Karhunen-Loève transform
Correlati	6	4	4	4	3
Sintesi	Confirmatory factor analysis is a measurement modelling technique that tests whether a hypothesised factor structure — typically derived from theory or an earlier exploratory analysis — fits observed data from a new sample. Developed by Karl Jöreskog in 1969, it became the dominant tool for validating psychological scales because it requires the researcher to specify in advance which items belong to which latent factor and then assesses the adequacy of that specification against explicit statistical fit criteria.	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.	Hierarchical Linear Modeling (HLM), also known as Multilevel Modeling (MLM), is a parametric statistical method for analyzing nested or clustered data — for example students within classrooms, patients within hospitals, or employees within organizations. Formalized by Raudenbush and Bryk in their 2002 seminal text (building on work from the mid-1980s), HLM simultaneously estimates individual-level and group-level effects while correctly partitioning variance across levels.	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.