Exploratory factor analysis I am running exploratory factor analysis and have extracted 3 factors, with items clearly loading on each one.
However, it appears to me that the items that have loaded onto the first factor could be further split into two, theoretically meaningful, groups. My question is therefore, could I re-run factor analysis on the first factor only to derive two groups Factor 1a and Factor 1b?
 A: You need to elaborate your question a bit. It all depends on what actually do you want to do with these factors. Is it just interpretation, or is it something else. In any case you should think over these points first


*

*How did you decide upon the initial number of factors (which in your case is 3), was it the scree plot that you got from eigen values.?

*What is the criteria which is leading you to decide that factor 1 should be splitted into further sub factors. As far as I understand the latent factors that you extract in the first run explain the maximum variance.


Solution


*

*You should try to extract that additional factor in the first run itself by manually setting the number of factors to 4 rather than taking it from the scree plot.

*If it all you want to split into sub factors then, that problem will be different from the original problem , but there is no harm in doing it.


My View :  If we were able to club the variables into latent factors by looking itself only, then there was no need of factor analysis at the second stage at all
