Enhancing Assessment Literacy in Professional Counseling: A Practical Overview of Factor Analysis

Assessment literacy is an essential competency area for professional counselors who administer tests and interpret the results of participants’ scores. Using factor analysis to demonstrate internal structure validity of test scores is a key element of assessment literacy. The underuse of psychometrically sound instrumentation in professional counseling is alarming, as a careful review and critique of the internal structure of test scores is vital for ensuring the integrity of clients’ results. A professional counselor’s utilization of instrumentation without evidence of the internal structure validity of scores can have a number of negative consequences for their clients, including misdiagnoses and inappropriate treatment planning. The extant literature includes a series of articles on the major types and extensions of factor analysis, including exploratory factor analysis, confirmatory factor analysis (CFA), higher-order CFA, and multiple-group CFA. However, reading multiple psychometric articles can be overwhelming for professional counselors who are looking for comparative guidelines to evaluate the validity evidence of scores on instruments before administering them to clients. This article provides an overview for the layperson of the major types and extensions of factor analysis and can serve as reference for professional counselors who work in clinical, research, and educational settings.