Exploratory Factor Analysis

Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) is a statistical technique used to identify underlying patterns or groupings among many related variables. Imagine you have a large set of survey questions, and you want to see if some questions are connected because they measure the same underlying concept, like happiness or stress. EFA helps uncover these hidden factors by analyzing how questions correlate with each other, simplifying complex data into fewer, meaningful categories. This allows researchers to understand the core dimensions behind the data without predefined assumptions.