SPSS® 12.0 Command Syntax Reference

560 FACTOR
Matrix Input
• FACTOR can read matrix materials written either by a previous FACTOR procedure or by
a procedure that writes correlation or covariance matrices. For more information, see
Universals on p. 3.
• MATRIX=IN cannot be used unless a working data file has already been defined. To read an
existing matrix data file at the beginning of a session, first use GET to retrieve the matrix
file and then specify IN(COR=*), IN(COV=*) or IN(FAC=*) on MATRIX.
• The VARIABLES subcommand cannot be used with matrix input.
• For correlation and covariance matrix input, the ANALYSIS subcommand can specify a
subset of the variables in the matrix. You cannot specify a subset of variables for factor
loading matrix input. By default, the ANALYSIS subcommand uses all variables in the
matrix.
Format of the Matrix Data File
Split Files
• For correlation or covariance matrices, the matrix data file has two special variables created
by the program: ROWTYPE_ and VARNAME_. Variable ROWTYPE_ is a short string variable
with the value CORR (for Pearson correlation coefficient) or COV (for covariance) for
each matrix row. Variable VARNAME_ is a short string variable whose values are the names
of the variables used to form the correlation matrix.
• For factor loading matrices, the program generates two special variables named
ROWTYPE_ and FACTOR_. The value for ROWTYPE_ is always FACTOR. The values for
FACTOR_ are the ordinal numbers of the factors.
• For factor score coefficient matrices, the matrix data file has two special variables created:
ROWTYPE_ and VARNAME_. If split-file processing is in effect, the split variables appear
first in the matrix output file, followed by ROWTYPE_, VARNAME_, and the variables in the
analysis. ROWTYPE_ is a short string with three possible values: MEAN, STDDEV, and
FSCOEF. There is always one occurrence of the value MEAN. If /METHOD = CORRELA-
TION then there is one occurrence of the value STDDEV. Otherwise, this value does not
appear. There are as many occurrences of FSCOEF as the number of extracted factors.
VARNAME_ is a short string who values are FACn where n is the sequence of the saved
factor when ROWTYPE_ equals FSCOEF. Otherwise the value is empty.
• The remaining variables are the variables used to form the matrix.
• FACTOR can read or write split-file matrices.
• When split-file processing is in effect, the first variables in the matrix data file are the split
variables, followed by ROWTYPE_, VARNAME_ (or FACTOR_), and then the variables used
to form the matrix.
• A full set of matrix materials is written for each split-file group defined by the split variables.
• A split variable cannot have the same variable name as any other variable written to the
matrix data file.