When to Use Exploratory and Confirmatory Factor Analysis?

When you are developing scales, you can use an exploratory factor analysis to test a new scale, and then move on to confirmatory factor analysis to validate the factor structure in a new sample.

When should we use exploratory factor analysis?

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.

What is the difference between confirmatory factor analysis and exploratory factor analysis?

Exploratory factor analysis (EFA) could be described as orderly simplification of interrelated measures. ... Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) is a statistical technique used to verify the factor structure of a set of observed variables.