Some simple structure significance tests for exploratory component analysis with market survey data

Several uncertainties continue to hinder researchers using exploratory factor analysis. Among other decisions, the choice of the number of factors to retain and the interpretability of the rotated solution remain problematical. In this paper, we suggest a simple structure criterion as a general framework for choosing the number of factors and for interpreting the rotated factor structure matrix. The proposed methodology is demonstrated with demographic data from a consumer panel. The results show the importance of increasing the information yield from exploratory factor analysis.