R: Print Loadings in Factor Analysis

loadings {stats} | R Documentation

## Print Loadings in Factor Analysis

### Description

Extract or print loadings in factor analysis (or principal components analysis).

### Usage

    loadings(x, ...)

    ## S3 method for class 'loadings'
    print(x, digits = 3, cutoff = 0.1, sort = FALSE, ...)

    ## S3 method for class 'factanal'
    print(x, digits = 3, ...)

### Arguments

`x` | an object of class `"factanal"` or `"princomp"` or the `loadings` component of such an object.
`digits` | number of decimal places to use in printing uniquenesses and loadings.
`cutoff` | loadings smaller than this (in absolute value) are suppressed.
`sort` | logical. If true, the variables are sorted by their importance on each factor. Each variable with any loading larger than 0.5 (in modulus) is assigned to the factor with the largest loading, and the variables are printed in the order of the factor they are assigned to, then those unassigned.
`...` | further arguments for other methods, ignored for `loadings`.

### Details

‘Loadings’ is a term from factor analysis, but because factor analysis and principal component analysis (PCA) are often conflated in the social science literature, it was used for PCA by SPSS and hence by `princomp` in S-PLUS to help SPSS users.

Small loadings are conventionally not printed (replaced by spaces), to draw the eye to the pattern of the larger loadings.

The `print` method for class `"factanal"` calls the `"loadings"` method to print the loadings, and so passes down arguments such as `cutoff` and `sort`.

The signs of the loadings vectors are arbitrary for both factor analysis and PCA.

### Note

There are other functions called `loadings` in contributed packages which are S3 or S4 generic: the `...` argument is to make it easier for this one to become a default method.

### See Also

`factanal`, `princomp`

[Package stats version 3.1.2 Index]