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rfactor-analysis

Extracting factor scores from svyfactanal


I was trying to run a factor analysis by using the svyfactanal() function and getting factor scores. There is no problem with running the factor analysis.

library(survey)
factor1 <- svyfactanal(~  var1 + var2 + var3 ... + var12, 
                       design = design, factors = 4, rotation = "promax", 
                       scores = "regression")

However, when I want to extract the factor scores for each observation I receive an error message:

data1 <- cbind(data, factor1$scores)

Error in data.frame(..., check.names = FALSE) : arguments imply differing number of rows: 1297, 0

Then I check the factor scores manually, and I received this message:

factor1$scores
# NULL

Is there a way to extract these scores from the svyfactanal() function?


Solution

  • svyfactanal just passes a different covariance matrix to factanal. In the documentation for factanal, the scores are in $scores e.g. (from the help):

    v1 <- c(1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,3,3,3,3,3,4,5,6)
    v2 <- c(1,2,1,1,1,1,2,1,2,1,3,4,3,3,3,4,6,5)
    v3 <- c(3,3,3,3,3,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,5,4,6)
    v4 <- c(3,3,4,3,3,1,1,2,1,1,1,1,2,1,1,5,6,4)
    v5 <- c(1,1,1,1,1,3,3,3,3,3,1,1,1,1,1,6,4,5)
    v6 <- c(1,1,1,2,1,3,3,3,4,3,1,1,1,2,1,6,5,4)
    m1 <- cbind(v1,v2,v3,v4,v5,v6)
    cor(m1)
    factanal(m1, factors = 3) # varimax is the default
    factanal(m1, factors = 3, rotation = "promax")
    # The following shows the g factor as PC1
    prcomp(m1) # signs may depend on platform
    
    ## formula interface
    factanal(~v1+v2+v3+v4+v5+v6, factors = 3,
             scores = "Bartlett")$scores
    

    If you wanted just the first factor scores, you would use:

    factanal(~v1+v2+v3+v4+v5+v6, factors = 3,
             scores = "Bartlett")$scores[,1]
    

    or, for your example, something like:

    factor1scores <- factor1$scores[,1]
    data1 <- cbind(data, factor1scores)