Microfact 1.00: Factor Analysis Program for Dichotomous and Ordered Polytomous Response Data

MicroFACT is an easy-to-use factor analysis program that can quickly tackle mainframe size problems on your PC. It provides a methodologically defensible and computationally efficient method for factor analysis of both dichotomous and polytomous data sets. Using virtual memory, it can handle analyses of data sets of any size and can assist in verifying the dimensionality of your test -- one of the most basic assumptions of the application of the item response theory model. Assessing the dimensionality of a test can be accomplished using a factor analytic approach if appropriate computations are employed. However, the linear factor analysis model as typically implemented in most statistical packages often fails to use the appropriate measures of correlation (tetrachoric correlations) for such a factor analysis. MicroFACT makes it easy to analyze the interrelationships among test items to determine the number of underlying dimensions. It is simple to use and provides detailed, but understandable, results. For the factor analysis of other types of data, such as polytomous data, MicroFACT represents a dramatic step forward in overcoming the biased results produced by the linear factor analysis program. MicroFACT requires DOS 3.3 or higher, a 386DX or higher, and a math coprocessor (or 486DX) with 2MB RAM.