Exploratory and Confirmatory Factor Analysis Essay

Exploratory and Confirmatory Factor Analysis - Essay Example The article makes use of concepts derived socio-technical theory as well as the role theory in an attempt to show the relationship between technostress and productivity. In the article, CFA and EFA approaches are applied in investigating the theoretical constructs and the factors represented in the study about the relationship between technostress and human productivity (Chilton, Hardgrave, & and Armstrong, 2005). The two approaches enhance the hypothesis that the factors used are correlated. Three hypotheses are thus developed. In hypothesis 1, stress comes out as people try to respond to various factors. Hypothesis 2 depicts stress as correlated to the roles of individuals within organizations. Hypothesis 3 also shows a correlation between technology and organization roles (Tarafdar, Nathan, & Ragu-Nathan, 2007). The two approaches are used in accessing the quality of every item used in the study. Both the CFA and the EFA are applied for both confirmatory and exploratory purposes. This aspect is seen in the three hypotheses, which address the three variables differently. While EFA and CFA are seen to have several similarities in their statistical applications, they greatly contrast in certain ways as well. The use of EFA required that a decision is made on the number of factors applied through an examination of the output from an analysis of principal component (Nygaard & Dahlstrom, 2002). For the article, a five-factor structure is first established to analyze the items. Conversely, the use of CFA requires a specification of the number of factors before the analysis. (Tarafdar, Nathan, & Ragu-Nathan, 2007) Again, the CFA involve the specification of a particular factor structure with an indication of the factor on which each item would load while in the case of EFA, all items load all the factors. In estimating factor loading, maximum likelihood is used, but