In multivariate statistics, exploratory factor analysis is a statistical method used to uncover the underlying structure of a relatively large set of variables. EFA is a technique within factor analysis whose overarching goal is to identify the underlying relationships between measured variables.

What is exploratory factor analysis in research?

Exploratory factor analysis is a statistical technique that is used to reduce data to a smaller set of summary variables and to explore the underlying theoretical structure of the phenomena. It is used to identify the structure of the relationship between the variable and the respondent.

What is an exploratory factor analysis used for?

Exploratory factor analysis (EFA) is generally used to discover the factor structure of a measure and to examine its internal reliability. EFA is often recommended when researchers have no hypotheses about the nature of the underlying factor structure of their measure.