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Unit 3 · Psychological Testing Psychology · June 2020 · 25 Sep 2020, Shift 1

A psychologist developed a scale for measuring warmth and competence dimensions. As a part of scale development, she factor analysed 25 items to retain 20 items. She chose Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA). The Bartlett's test = 237.8, p < .001. The overall Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin test (KMO) is 0.89. Principal Components Analysis (PCA) was used to extract components. The first eight eigenvalues were 9.9, 6.5, 1.6, 1.00, 0.85, 0.83, 0.82 and 0.79. She retained factors on the basis of scree plot and rotated them using varimax criteria. Three items showed cross-loadings, eighteen items loaded on only one of the factors, and remaining items did not load on any factors.

Which of the following is correct in case of three items having cross-loading?

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Correct answer: D. They should not be retained in the final scale

Explanation

Items that cross-load on more than one factor are factorially impure and are usually dropped from the final scale.

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