factor loadings and item-total correlations

Posted by Maguin, Eugene on Aug 12, 2013; 3:57pm
URL: http://spssx-discussion.165.s1.nabble.com/factor-loadings-and-item-total-correlations-tp5721548.html

What can be made of a comparison of factor loadings and item-total correlations? I understand the computation of each but I’ve never thought of the two sets of value in relation to each other. To focus comments here are the data for items A, B, C, D. I-T are the item-total correlations and FL are the factor loadings.

 

              A           B           C            D           I-T         FL

A           1.00      .70        .38        .34        .57        .83

B           .70        1.00      .50        .32        .62        .90

C           .38        .50        1.00      .60        .63        .49

D           .34        .32        .60        1.00      .52        .33

 

The surprising result—to me, is similarity of the item-total correlations compared to the factor loadings. I think that can be accounted for by the fact that items A are good proxies for each other and that the same is true for items C and D but to a slightly lesser extent. And also that items B and C are pretty good proxy for each other as well. Is this too much to be made of the data? Can more be said?

 

Thanks, Gene Maguin