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rpcarotational-matricespsych

Is there a good package for by-hand / manual / judgmental factor / component rotation?

I'm trying to add a function to manually (or by-hand, or judgmentally) rotate a factor loadings matrix from principal components analysis to the qmethod R package. By-hand rotation as in: one specifies the angle by which to rotate any given pair of factors. (Yeah it's weird, but it makes sense in Q Methodology.)

For now, I'm not looking for an interactive GUI (though that'd be real nice), but just a CLI interface where you press left or right and get updated plots and finally say OK.

The baseline is something like this from the legacy PQMethod program. enter image description here Here's a short video.

My current approach is to use psych::factor.rotate(), and to program a somewhat interactive (as in right, left, OK) CLI interface on top of that with updating plots.

Still, I wonder whether someone hasn't done this already.

I googled away, but came up short (couldn't even find a by-hand rotation procedure other than psych::factor.rotate().

Any suggestions?

Ps.: bonus if you have a suggestion for how to do this with an interactive GUI.

Pps.: anyone kind enough to add a qmethod tag to this? I don't have the necessary points.

Solution

  • I'd give manipulate a try - something in the veins of:

    library(psych)
library(manipulate)
l <- l_orig <- unclass(loadings(principal(Harman.5, 2, scores=TRUE)))
manipulate( 
  { 
    if(rotateRight) 
      l <<- factor.rotate(l, angle, 1, 2)
    if (rotateLeft)
      l <<- factor.rotate(l, -1*angle, 1, 2)

    plot(l, xlim = c(-1, 1), ylim = c(-1, 1), xlab = 1, ylab = 2); abline(v = 0); abline(h = 0)
  }, 
  angle = slider(1, 90, step=1, initial = 1, label = "Angle"), 
  rotateRight = button(">"),
  rotateLeft = button("<")
)
l; l_orig

    enter image description here