What is the minimum sample size for exploratory factor analysis?

What is the minimum sample size for exploratory factor analysis?

Exploratory factor analysis (EFA) is generally regarded as a technique for large sample sizes (N), with N = 50 as a reasonable absolute minimum.

How much data do you need for factor analysis?

It is also important to have a sufficient number of observations to support your factor analysis: per variable you should ideally have about 20 observations in the data set to ensure stable results. A common minimum is the lesser of 10 observations per variable and 100 observations.

How many participants are needed for exploratory factor analysis?

Although there are rules of thumb such as 5 or 10 participants per item, these are simply rules of thumb. Sometimes smaller EFA studies with ns of 150 (depending on the type of FA and number of items) can be useful.

What is 10 times rule sample size?

A widely used minimum sample size estimation method in PLS-SEM is the ’10-times rule’ method (Hair et al., 2011), which builds on the assumption that the sample size should be greater than 10 times the maximum number of inner or outer model links pointing at any latent variable in the model.

How does CFA determine sample size?

Simulation studies show that with normally distributed indicator variables and no missing data, a reasonable sample size for a simple CFA model is about N = 150 (Muthén and Muthén, 2002). For multi-group modeling, the rule of thumb is 100 cases/observations per group (Kline, 2005).

When to consider sample size in factor analysis?

Kyriazos, T. (2018) Applied Psychometrics: Sample Size and Sample Power Considerations in Factor Analysis (EFA, CFA) and SEM in General. Psychology, 9, 2207-2230. doi: 10.4236/psych

How does sample size affect the precision of EFA?

Thus, the sample size has an impact on the precision of all statistical estimates, including those made in EFA (Thompson, 2004). Specifically, in EFA the replicability of a factor structure is partially dependent on the sample size of the initial analysis.

How big should the sample size be for a study?

Study 1 (retrospective analysis of existing data) identified 84 shared beliefs of 14 general medical practitioners about managing patients with sore throat without prescribing antibiotics. The criterion for saturation was achieved for Normative beliefs but not for other beliefs or studywise saturation.

How big should sample size be for CFA?

Since there were only three items left to describe this one factor, a large sample size was needed (more than 300) to conduct the CFA (MacCallum et al., 1999). Our sample size (N = 166) did not meet this criterion, so we relied on a reliability test.

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