An Investigation of the Effect of the Number of Scale Intervals on Principal Components Factor Analysis

The effect of the number of scale intervals of a continuous variable on the results of principal components factor analysis was investigated. Analyses were performed for seven different numbers of scale intervals. The general effect was a decrease in the size of the eigenvalues, communalities, and factor loadings as the number of scale divisions was reduced. The magnitude of the effect was, however, not large and the pattern of the rotated factor loadings was not appreciably affected.