# CFA: should I remove highly correlated items?

I want to Run CFA model (N=400), but I have a question about the correlation between items. I know I should have high correlation between items that make up one factor (cor>.3). I have two factors Anx ( first 4 items) and Eff ( the rest). Anx items looks good, but some of my efficacy items has correlations >0.8. should I remove those? I looked at VIF s scores :

##   Anx_1.post   Anx_2.post   Anx_3.post   Anx_4.post Eff.1_1.post Eff.1_2.post
##         2.71         2.55         2.58         3.11         4.62         2.78
## Eff.1_3.post Eff.1_4.post Eff.1_5.post Eff.2_1.post Eff.2_2.post Eff.2_3.post
##         5.51         6.02         5.57         4.58         4.83         6.29
## Eff.2_4.post
##         1.83


• Why do you think you should remove them ? What is your research question ? Please provide further details about your study and the data Jul 18, 2020 at 15:43
• Hi Robert, thanks a lot for your reply. I am trying to come up with a some sort of score that represent test anxiety (4 survey questions) and self efficacy (9 questions) to use in the models to explain differences in grades. So I decided to do EFA and CFA to determine which questions to use . I have an issue with highly correlated items as I just wondering if items are highly correlated , let say .9, does it mean they measuring almost exactly the same thing, this dropping off one of them remove that redundancy Jul 18, 2020 at 22:07
• I also try to see why my model have quite good TLI and CFI scores but poor rmsea Jul 18, 2020 at 22:07
• Isn't the objective of doing factor analysis is to find "common factors" that can explain several measured events that are often times correlated? Jul 19, 2020 at 8:55