Variable labels in factor analysis

Discuss the jamovi platform, possible improvements, etc.
Post Reply
User avatar
leehw
Posts: 20
Joined: Fri Nov 22, 2019 8:48 am

Variable labels in factor analysis

Post by leehw »

Would it be possible to have a tick box in the factor analysis interfaces to turn switch between displaying variable names and variable labels in the output?

When interpreting a factor structure, this...

TSO_1
TSO_5
TSO_9

...can be much less helpful than...

'I don't diet'
'I love chocolate'
'I have a sweet tooth'

The option to switch between the two, as in SPSS, would be invaluable to me.
User avatar
jonathon
Posts: 2613
Joined: Fri Jan 27, 2017 10:04 am

Re: Variable labels in factor analysis

Post by jonathon »

yeah, there's a bit of a mismatch here. because SPSS is from the middle ages, it only allows variable names to be up to 8 characters long and to only contain alpha-numeric characters (?). which is why people have called their variables things like TSO_1, etc, and then to help them remember what that means, they add a label of 'I don't diet' to it. where as in jamovi, we've just expected people to call their variables 'I don't diet'.

originally, when people would import spss files, we'd use the labels as variable names, but people didn't like that.

so yeah, it's a bit of a tricky one. perhaps we need to adopt the SPSS approach.

jonathon
Post Reply