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	Analisi Fattoriale Esplorativa (AFE)	Confirmatory factor analysis	Alpha di Cronbach (Analisi di Affidabilità)	Modellazione di equazioni strutturali (SEM)
Campo	Statistica	Psicometria	Statistica	Statistica
Famiglia	Latent structure	Latent structure	Latent structure	Latent structure
Anno di origine	—	1969	1951	1970
Ideatore	—	Karl Gustav Jöreskog	Lee J. Cronbach	Karl Jöreskog (LISREL framework, 1970s)
Tipo	Latent variable / dimension reduction	Hypothesis-testing latent variable model	Reliability / internal consistency coefficient	Latent variable / causal modeling
Fonte seminale	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.	Jöreskog, K. G. (1969). A general approach to confirmatory maximum likelihood factor analysis. Psychometrika, 34(2), 183–202.	Cronbach, L. J. (1951). Coefficient alpha and the internal structure of tests. Psychometrika, 16(3), 297–334.	Hair, J. F., Black, W. C., Babin, B. J. & Anderson, R. E. (2019). Multivariate Data Analysis (8th ed.). Cengage Learning. ISBN: 978-1473756540
Alias	common factor analysis, açımlayıcı faktör analizi, factor analysis	CFA, confirmatory FA, measurement model, restricted factor analysis	coefficient alpha, alpha reliability, internal consistency reliability, Güvenilirlik Analizi (Cronbach Alpha)	Yapısal Eşitlik Modellemesi (SEM), structural equation modelling, covariance structure analysis, latent variable modeling
Correlati	4	4	4	5
Sintesi	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.	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.	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.	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.