What to do after running an exploratory factor analysis?

Say I asked 1000 people to evaluate 10 items about one product. The data looks like

ID item1 item2 …item10
1
2
3…..


After running an explorative factor analysis, there will be for example 3 factors created, fac_1, fac_2, fac_3.

ID item1 item2 .. item10  fac_1 fac_2 fac_3
1                         -.5     2     3
2                          1      -.8    -.2
3                         -.3     -.1    -.5


I have the impression that in the books, the capital always ends here. Yes I am clear now that there are 3 hidden structures behind my 10 items, how should I evaluate my product in this three structures (aggregate level)? How much score does my product get in this three factors?

I would like to know: How much scores my products get in this three sturctures(aggregate level), for example,

in Fac_1  score 1.2
in Fac_2  score 0.5
in Fac_3  score -0.9


How can I calculate this kind of score? Any suggestion?

What confuses me is: I have 1000*3 factor scores, what should I do next? The main question is: How does my product performs in this three factors? What should I calculate?

• Unclear what you are asking. Are you asking how to compute a score for each person for each factor? This can be a simple matter of choosing the option for saving factor scores. Dec 19 '14 at 2:16
• Hi @rolando2 , i updated my question, what I would like to know is the scores in a aggregate level Dec 19 '14 at 7:51
• Are you trying to calculate factor scores that can be used in further analysis. In SPSS, just select "Save factor scores". Dec 19 '14 at 14:49
• If that is the case, then it is a question about software implementation and which button to push, which is off-topic here. Dec 19 '14 at 15:16
• Hi @JeremyMiles, I know how to save the factor scores, what confuses me is that all books end here. I would like to know what I could do next after having 1000*3 factor scores, after all, I can not say anything about " how does my product performs in this three structure" Dec 20 '14 at 21:31

There are various R packages for performing SEM, including path analysis. They include sem, lavaan, OpenMx, plspm, semPLS and many others. If you would like to review more detailed information on the above-mentioned methods, please check my earlier answer on Cross Validated.