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Reliability Alpha, Principal Component Analysis, and Exploratory Factor Analysis

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Statistical Analysis of Management Data

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Abstract

In this chapter, we discuss the issues involved in building measures or scales. We focus the chapter on two types of analysis: (1) the measurement of reliability with Cronbach’s alpha and (2) the verification of unidimensionality using factor analysis. We concentrate on exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and we only introduce the notion of confirmatory factor analysis. In the next chapter, we develop in detail the confirmatory factor analytic model and examine the measures of convergent and discriminant validity.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. INSEAD, Fontainebleau Cedex, France

    Hubert Gatignon

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  1. Hubert Gatignon
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Gatignon, H. (2014). Reliability Alpha, Principal Component Analysis, and Exploratory Factor Analysis. In: Statistical Analysis of Management Data. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-8594-0_3

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