Should I still need to use Factor Analyses for the scales used in previous papers?

Question

Let's say, I used two scales that measures - 1. Perception of eco-label and 2. Perception of eco-brand. Each of them have 4 items (questions). Items are measured on 7 point-likert type questions. These scales have been previously used in other papers and their items were grouped under these 2 scales names with Factor Analysis in those papers as well. Therefore, According to previous papers, I know what item belongs to which scale.

My question is the following: Do I still need to do 2 separate Factor Analyses, in my paper, for grouping these items under 2 factors (perception of eco-label and eco-brand)? OR it is enough to know from previous papers which items belong to which scale?

please advise

Answer 1

If your audience is familiar with the questionnaires and your subjects are drawn from a similar population, I don't think you need to redo the factor analysis. Instead, you could write something like

Each subject completed the [Questionnaire Name] and the responses were analyzed as in [citation] to assess subjects' perception of eco-label and eco-brand.

This is pretty common in parts of psychology. One publication describes a Questionnaire/Inventory/Scale and demonstrates its usefulness (e.g., a certain pattern of responses predicts that the subject will be diagnosed with a condition). Subsequent papers typically take the scale as given and show novel applications of it (e.g., selecting treatments), without attempting to re-validate the scale from the original paper.

However, you do have to be careful that you are administering the same scale and to a similar pool of subjects, since even minor changes like moving from a paper questionnaire to a computerized survey or a slightly different subject pool can sometimes affect its validity.