Beliefs about the consequences of using alcohol, alcohol expectancies, are powerful predictors of underage drinking. The Alcohol Expectancies Questionnaire-Adolescent form (AEQ-A) has been widely used to measure expectancies in youth. Despite its broad use, the factor structure of the AEQ-A has not been firmly established. It is also not known…

The internal structure of the revised Life Orientation Test (LOT-R, German version; M. F. Scheier, C. S. Carver, & M. W. Bridges, 1994) was analyzed in a sample of 46,133 participants who ranged in age from 18 years to 103 years. Confirmatory factor analysis showed that dispositional optimism, as measured by the LOT-R, is bidimensional, …

This study examines the organization and development of 5 domains of reasoning (categorical, quantitative, spatial, causal, and propositional) and the construct validity of a test designed to measure development from early adolescence to early adulthood. The theory underlying the test is first summarized and the conceptual design of the test is…

Background: The Approaches to Teaching Inventory (ATI) was developed to explore the relationship between students' approaches to learning, and teachers' approaches to teaching, in the physical sciences in higher education. It is increasingly being used in other contexts. Aim: To analyse the factor structure of the ATI. Method: Confirmatory factor…

Research in the behavioral and health sciences frequently involves the application of one-factor analysis of variance models. The goal may be to compare several independent groups of subjects on a quantitative dependent variable or to compare measurements made on a single group of subjects on different occasions or under different conditions. In…

Exploratory and confirmatory factor analytic techniques are compared, and how to conduct a confirmatory factor analysis is reviewed. A sampling of "fit" statistics and suggestions for methods to improve models for testing are also presented. Exploratory factor analysis is used to explore data to determine the number of the nature of…

Rotation is used in almost all exploratory factor analysis (EFA) studies. There are numerous rotation strategies that can be employed in these various applications. This paper reviews the various rotation choices in EFA studies, including confirmatory rotation, and presents criteria useful in selecting rotation methods in various analytic…

The central objective of factor analysis is to explain the greatest amount of variance in a data set with the smallest number of factors. Higher-order analysis is an invaluable tool that offers the benefit of parsimony provided by first-order analysis with the opportunity to make data-based generalizations beyond the first-order. Higher-order…

Logistic regression was used for modeling the observation-to-indicator ratio needed for the standard error scree procedure (SEscree) to correctly identify the number of factors existing in generated sample correlation matrices. The created correlation matrices were manipulated along the number of factors (4,6), sample size (250, 500), magnitude of…

Assumptions underlying the multifaceted, hierarchical structure of self-efficacy previously hypothesized by R. Shavelson, J. Hubner, and G. Stanton (1976) for the construct of self-concept were tested. The self-efficacy interpretation of the Science Self-Efficacy Scale (H. Kennedy, 1996), a relatively new measure, was studied with 331 (151 female…

Although it has been suggested that an understanding of shyness may come from a better understanding of social anxiety, there is no hard evidence that shy people are in fact socially anxious. To explore the link between shyness and social anxiety, a 297-item questionnaire was administered to 302 college students. Analysis of the 100 questionnaire…

A Bayesian procedure is given for estimation in unrestricted common factor analysis. A choice of the form of the prior distribution is justified. The procedure achieves its objective of avoiding inadmissible estimates of unique variances, and is reasonably insensitive to certain variations in the shape of the prior distribution. (Author/BJG)

This study was undertaken to compare factorial similarity across three scale versions within the same sample focusing on leadership phenomena. (Author/RK)

Procedures developed by Joreskog for studying similarities and differences in factor structures between different groups were applied to data from a study by Thurstoen to investigate the sampling stability of a hypothesized isolated configuration. The hypothesis of an isolated configuration was rejected but not by much. (Author/RC)

A "doubly-centered" raw data matrix is one for which both columns and rows have both unit variance and means equal to zero. The factor scores from one analysis are the same as factor pattern coefficients from the other analysis except for a variance adjustment. This study explored an extension of the reciprocity principle which may have…