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 Roger Brown posted on Wednesday, December 06, 2006 - 5:19 pm
Dear Bengt and Linda,

I have been doing some psychometric work on some scale, starting with EFA's and encountered the following error:

PROBLEM OCCURRED IN EXPLORATORY ANALYSIS WITH 3 FACTOR(S).
THE PROGRAM HAD PROBLEMS MINIMIZING THE FUNCTION.
TOO MANY FACTORS HAVE PROBABLY BEEN USED.

My analysis: type = efa 2 4;
Sample size 215 with 14 categorical variables.

I get a 2 factor and a 4 factor solution, but no 3 factor solution. I have tried to change start values, but I guess the EFA routine will not allow this. Any suggestions? Thanks.

Roger Brown
UW-Madison
 Linda K. Muthen posted on Thursday, December 07, 2006 - 8:18 am
This can happen. It is most likely a Heywood case. The only option is to change estimators to see if that helps.
 Roger Brown posted on Thursday, December 07, 2006 - 8:54 am
Thanks, changed to a WLS estimtor and was able to obtain a 3 dimensional solution that makes sense.

Roger
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