Use of Factor Analysis in Assessments of Clinical Teaching Evaluations

• Activity Number: 353
• Type: Contributed
• Date/Time: Tuesday, August 2, 2011 : 10:30 AM to 12:20 PM
• Sponsor: Section on Teaching of Statistics in the Health Sciences
• Author(s): Jay Mandrekar*+
• Companies: Mayo Clinic
• Keywords: Factor Analysis ; Latent Factors

Abstract

Factor analysis is a generic term for a family of statistical techniques concerned with the reduction of a set of observable variables in terms of a small number of latent factors. It has been developed primarily for analyzing relationships among a number of measurable entities (such as survey items or test scores). The underlying assumption of factor analysis is that there exists a number of unobserved latent variables (or "factors") that account for the correlations among observed variables, such that if the latent variables are partialled out or held constant, the partial correlations among observed variables all become zero. In other words, the latent factors determine the values of the observed variables. Factor analysis has been widely used, especially in behavioral sciences, to assess the construct validity of a test or a scale. The focus of this talk is to provide an introduction to factor analysis in the context of research projects from Medical Education that involve clinical teaching evaluations, for example, resident-teacher evaluations, resident's reflection on quality improvement etc.