Confirmatory Factor Analysis for Applied Research

Emphasizing practical and conceptual aspects of confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) over mathematics and formulas, Brown uses rich examples derived from the psychology, management, and sociology literatures to provide in-depth treatment of the concepts, procedures, pitfalls, and extensions of CFA methodology. Chock-full of useful advice, and including tables that recap the steps of procedures, the text shows readers how to conduct exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and understand similarities and differences to CFA; formulate, program, and interpret CFA models using popular latent variable software packages, such as LISREL, Mplus, Amos, EQS, and SAS/CALIS; and report results from a CFA study. Also covered are extensions of CFA to traditional IRT analysis, methods for determining needed sample sizes, and new CFA modeling possibilities (e.g., multilevel factor models, factor mixture models). Special features include a Web page offering data and program syntax files for many of the research examples, as well as links to CFA-related resources.