Confronta i metodi

	Analisi Fattoriale Esplorativa Politomica	Teoria della risposta all'item (IRT)
Campo	Psicometria	Psicometria
Famiglia	Latent structure	Latent structure
Anno di origine	1978	1952–1968
Ideatore	Bengt Muthén	Frederic M. Lord (and Allan Birnbaum for the 2PL/3PL models)
Tipo	Latent variable / dimension reduction	Probabilistic measurement model
Fonte seminale	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.	Lord, F. M. & Novick, M. R. (1968). Statistical Theories of Mental Test Scores. Addison-Wesley.
Alias	EFA for ordered-categorical data, polychoric EFA, ordinal exploratory factor analysis, polytomous factor analysis	IRT, latent trait theory, item characteristic curve theory, modern test theory
Correlati	4	5
Sintesi	Polytomous exploratory factor analysis extends standard EFA to ordered categorical (Likert-type) response data by replacing the Pearson correlation matrix with a polychoric correlation matrix. It recovers the latent continuous variable that each polytomous item is assumed to reflect, yielding more accurate factor loadings and better-defined factor structures than treating ordinal scores as if they were continuous.	Item response theory models the probability that a respondent answers an item correctly (or endorses it) as a function of the respondent's latent trait level and the item's own statistical properties — difficulty, discrimination, and guessing. Unlike classical test theory, IRT places persons and items on the same scale, yielding measurement that is sample-independent for items and test-independent for persons.