qmethod: qfcharact – R documentation

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qfcharact

Q methodology: factor characteristics

Description

Calculates the general factor characteristics: number of flagged Q-sorts, composite reliability, standard errors of factor scores, and comparisons between factors.

Usage

qfcharact(loa, flagged, zsc, nfactors, av_rel_coef = 0.8)

Arguments

`loa`	matrix or data frame of as many rows as Q-sorts (`nqsorts`) and `nfactors` columns, with values of factor loadings for Q-sorts, calculated using, e.g., `principal(...)$loadings`.
`flagged`	matrix or data frame of type logical, indicating which Q-sorts are flagged for each factor. Provided manually or automatically using `qflag`.
`zsc`	a data frame with the z-scores for statements, calculated using `qzscores`.
`nfactors`	number of factors extracted.
`av_rel_coef`	average reliability coefficient (the individual variability of a respondent), set by default as 0.8.

Value

Returns a list with three objects:

characteristics

data frame with the following values for each factor:

"av_rel_coef": average reliability coefficient.
"nload": number of loading Q-sorts.
"eigenvals": eigenvalues.
"expl_var": percentage of explained variance.
"reliability": composite reliability.
"se_fscores": standard error of factor scores (SE).

cor_zsc

matrix of correlation coefficients between factors z-scores.

sd_dif

matrix of standard errors of differences (SED).

Note

This is a function used within qzscores. Rarely to be used independently.

Author(s)

Aiora Zabala

References

Brown, S. R., 1980 Political subjectivity: Applications of Q methodology in political science, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

See further references on the methodology in qmethod-package.

qmethod

Analysis of Subjective Perspectives Using Q Methodology

v1.8

GPL (>= 2)

Authors

Aiora Zabala [aut, cre] (Main author, <https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8534-3325>), Maximilian Held [aut] (Author of additional data management functions), Frans Hermans [aut] (Author of centroid extraction function)

Initial release

2021-03-12