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This article presents a method for using Microsoft (MS) Excel for confirmatory factor analysis (CFA). CFA is often seen as an impenetrable technique, and thus, when it is taught, there is frequently little explanation of the mechanisms or underlying calculations. The aim of this article is to demonstrate that this is not the case; it is relatively straightforward to produce a spreadsheet in MS Excel that can carry out simple CFA. It is possible, with few or no programming skills, to effectively program a CFA analysis and, thus, to gain insight into the workings of the procedure.
Microsoft (MS) Excel is a widely used spreadsheet package that can carry out many types of analysis. Excel can also be used for statistical analysis, either by employing the built-in Analysis ToolPak or by creating the appropriate spreadsheet to do the calculations required. We do not use Excel for everyday statistical analysis and would strongly recommend against it (see, e.g., Knusel, 1998; Simon, 2000). However, many people might be surprised to discover that MS Excel can be used to do simple (and more complex) confirmatory factor analysis (CFA). In this short article, we will present a method that allows the reader to do CFA in Excel-not, we would like to emphasize, because we think that this is the most useful tool. If one really needs to do CFA and has no suitable program, there is free software out there that can be used-for example, Mx (Neale, Boker, Xie, & Maes, 2004) or sem, a part of the free R package, (Fox, 2004). Excel may have a useful educational purpose, either for teaching or for people who wish to deepen their understanding of this statistical method.
Confirmatory Factor Analysis
CFA is a technique based on a framework of structural equation modeling (SEM). It is contrasted with exploratory factor analysis (EFA). EFA is a data-driven process; the data are used to derive a model in an exploratory fashion. When CFA is used, the model first is proposed and then is applied to the data. The question is asked, is it feasible that these data could have been generated by this process?
The data are usually given in the form of a covariance matrix, shown in Table 1, and...