Hostname: page-component-76d6cb85b7-pn7tm Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2026-07-14T15:18:30.948Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Factor Uniqueness of the Structural Parafac Model

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2025

Paolo Giordani*
Affiliation:
Sapienza Università di Roma
Roberto Rocci
Affiliation:
Sapienza Università di Roma
Giuseppe Bove
Affiliation:
University of Roma Tre
*
Correspondence should bemade to Paolo Giordani,Department of Statistical Sciences, Sapienza Università di Roma, P.le Aldo Moro, 5, 00185 Rome, Italy. Email: paolo.giordani@uniroma1.it
Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Factor analysis is a well-known method for describing the covariance structure among a set of manifest variables through a limited number of unobserved factors. When the observed variables are collected at various occasions on the same statistical units, the data have a three-way structure and standard factor analysis may fail. To overcome these limitations, three-way models, such as the Parafac model, can be adopted. It is often seen as an extension of principal component analysis able to discover unique latent components. The structural version, i.e., as a reparameterization of the covariance matrix, has been also formulated but rarely investigated. In this article, such a formulation is studied by discussing under what conditions factor uniqueness is preserved. It is shown that, under mild conditions, such a property holds even if the specific factors are assumed to be within-variable, or within-occasion, correlated and the model is modified to become scale invariant.

Information

Type
Theory and Methods
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BY
This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
Copyright
Copyright © 2020 The Author(s)
Figure 0

Table 1. Bentler & McClain (1976) correlation data.

Figure 1

Table 2. Fit, AIC, BIC and number of parameters for different Parafac models applied to the Bentler & McClain (1976) correlation data.

Figure 2

Table 3. Diagonal elements of the scaling matrix D. (Standard errors are within parentheses.)

Figure 3

Table 4. Estimated factor loading matrix for the traits. (Standard errors are within parentheses.)

Figure 4

Table 5. Estimated factor loading matrix for the methods. (Standard errors are within parentheses.)

Figure 5

Table 6. Diagonal elements of the square root of the estimated covariance matrix for the common factors Φ1/2\documentclass[12pt]{minimal}\usepackage{amsmath}\usepackage{wasysym}\usepackage{amsfonts}\usepackage{amssymb}\usepackage{amsbsy}\usepackage{mathrsfs}\usepackage{upgreek}\setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt}\begin{document}$${\varvec{\Phi }}^{1/2}$$\end{document}. (Standard errors are within parentheses.)

Figure 6

Table 7. Square root of the estimated covariance matrix for the unique factors Ψ1/2\documentclass[12pt]{minimal}\usepackage{amsmath}\usepackage{wasysym}\usepackage{amsfonts}\usepackage{amssymb}\usepackage{amsbsy}\usepackage{mathrsfs}\usepackage{upgreek}\setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt}\begin{document}$${\varvec{\Psi }}^{1/2}$$\end{document}. (Standard errors are within parentheses.)