Factor analysis in political science: challenges of application
Keywords:
factor analysis, political science methodology, post-non-classical scientific paradigm, operationalization, Galton’s problemAbstract
The author analyzes the theoretical and methodological aspects of factor analysis in social sciences and highlights three hindrances in applying this method in political science: trade-off between the theoretical and the empirical, operationalization, and Galton’s problem. These difficulties occur at the stage of interpreting the created formalized mathematical model, which compactly synthesizes the key characteristics of the phenomenon under research. The reason is the specificity of political science: it studies macrosocial phenomena such as political regimes, political cultures, leadership, etc., whose number is far less than that of their statistically significant indicators. When the number of variables exceeds the number of cases, identifying causal connections might be difficult.DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.17072/2218-1067-2017-4-110-122References
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