Factor Analysis controlling Acquiescence

In order to run the factorial analysis only controlling Acquiescence, the data must have been imported and you had to select which items you want to include in the analysis. Then, select Acquiescence tab and enable Acquiescence control function. When this option is enabled you will not be able to modify the excluded or included items in “Data” tab.

This tab will display the content items defined in the Social Desirability tab or in the included items if Social Desirability control is off. Each factor have to be formed by a balanced pair number of items, half positively worded, and the other half negatively worded. If there are some factor defined by a different number of positive worded items than negative worded, it can be solved by selecting as unbalanced items the extra items. In the example data, there are 14 content items, 7 measuring one factor, which is Extraversion, and the other 7 measuring Agreeableness. In both cases there are 4 positively worded items and only 3 negatively worded, so, in order to obtain a balanced set of items, we have to select one positively worded item from each scale and move them to the unbalanced items column by pressing “>” button.

If some factor have an odd number of items, we recommend doing one Exploratory Factor Analysis without selecting any unbalanced item and check the Acquiescence factor loadings searching for the item with lower Acquiescence loading. When you have detected which item is the less influenced by Acquiescence bias, we recommend to use it as unbalanced on the next analysis.

Once you are done configuring the items, go to Response bias tab. On this window you will see a summary of current data configuration, including which items are excluded from the analysis and which are content items. You have to define the number of content factors and if you want to compute factor scores for each participant. You are able to select the option “Compute all possible bias analysis combinations”, which it can be useful if you want to appreciate the bias control effect.

You can also select the factor rotation that best suits:

• Orthogonal: Varimax method.
• Oblique: Promin method.
• Semi-specified oblique target rotation (if you’ve provided it).
• Semi-specified orthogonal target rotation (if you’ve provided it).

When you're ready, press Compute button. Once the analysis is complete, you can see the output in the subwindow, launch the output in a new window, save the output in plaintext (.txt), latex file (.tex), Rich Text Format (.rtf) and save factorial scores if you have request it previously.

Additionally, you’re able to save the current analysis status (meanwhile some data is available) at any time in a .mat file, in order to load it whenever you want and resume the analysis or reanalyze with some new configuration.