Factor Analysis

We quickly talked about factor analysis in class. Let me review using the salad spinner analogy. Factor analysis allows us to understand how different groups of variables “hang together” (that is, people respond similarly) to explain some construct, in this case, internet addiction versus high internet engagement. Essentially, we put all the survey items in a big salad bowl and we spin them around. We believe that the contents of our salad spinner have similar shapes (like marbles or cubes) and if we spin them around, all the marbles will go down a marble shaped tube and the cubes will go down the cube shaped tube. Then after we’ve finished spinning, we can see which items “hang together” and thus, which behaviors/cognitions people report as being very similar.

In the Charlton and Danforth study, the internet addiction items and the high internet engagement items went “down different tubes.” This means that they reflect different psychological constructs. Thus, internet addiction and high engagement are not the same thing (according to this paper). They are related (there was a correlation between the two of .38), but they are not the same thing. (Note: they actually measured “low” engagement so the correlation is -.38, but we are interested in the relationship between high engagement and addiction, so I reversed the correlation sign.)

This seems pretty interesting to me! I’d love for us to have a good chat about this article tomorrow, so be sure and read this article!