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A skew-normal factor model for the analysis of student satisfaction towards university courses

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  • Angela Montanari
  • Cinzia Viroli

Abstract

Classical factor analysis relies on the assumption of normally distributed factors that guarantees the model to be estimated via the maximum likelihood method. Even when the assumption of Gaussian factors is not explicitly formulated and estimation is performed via the iterated principal factors' method, the interest is actually mainly focussed on the linear structure of the data, since only moments up to the second ones are involved. In many real situations, the factors could not be adequately described by the first two moments only. For example, skewness characterizing most latent variables in social analysis can be properly measured by the third moment: the factors are not normally distributed and covariance is no longer a sufficient statistic. In this work we propose a factor model characterized by skew-normally distributed factors. Skew-normal refers to a parametric class of probability distributions, that extends the normal distribution by an additional shape parameter regulating the skewness. The model estimation can be solved by the generalized EM algorithm, in which the iterative Newthon-Raphson procedure is needed in the M-step to estimate the factor shape parameter. The proposed skew-normal factor analysis is applied to the study of student satisfaction towards university courses, in order to identify the factors representing different aspects of the latent overall satisfaction.

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  • Angela Montanari & Cinzia Viroli, 2010. "A skew-normal factor model for the analysis of student satisfaction towards university courses," Journal of Applied Statistics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 37(3), pages 473-487.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:japsta:v:37:y:2010:i:3:p:473-487
    DOI: 10.1080/02664760902736737
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    Cited by:

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    2. Hashemi, Farzane & Naderi, Mehrdad & Jamalizadeh, Ahad & Bekker, Andriette, 2021. "A flexible factor analysis based on the class of mean-mixture of normal distributions," Computational Statistics & Data Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 157(C).
    3. Tsung-I Lin & I-An Chen & Wan-Lun Wang, 2023. "A robust factor analysis model based on the canonical fundamental skew-t distribution," Statistical Papers, Springer, vol. 64(2), pages 367-393, April.
    4. Murray, Paula M. & Browne, Ryan P. & McNicholas, Paul D., 2014. "Mixtures of skew-t factor analyzers," Computational Statistics & Data Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 77(C), pages 326-335.
    5. Winfried Zinn & Sebastian Sauer & Richard Göllner, 2016. "The German Inpatient Satisfaction Scale," SAGE Open, , vol. 6(2), pages 21582440166, April.
    6. Kim, Hea-Jung, 2018. "Bayesian hierarchical robust factor analysis models for partially observed sample-selection data," Journal of Multivariate Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 164(C), pages 65-82.
    7. Stegeman, Alwin, 2016. "A new method for simultaneous estimation of the factor model parameters, factor scores, and unique parts," Computational Statistics & Data Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 99(C), pages 189-203.
    8. Murray, Paula M. & Browne, Ryan P. & McNicholas, Paul D., 2017. "Hidden truncation hyperbolic distributions, finite mixtures thereof, and their application for clustering," Journal of Multivariate Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 161(C), pages 141-156.
    9. Mariano Ruiz Espejo & Miguel Delgado Pineda & Saralees Nadarajah, 2013. "Optimal unbiased estimation of some population central moments," METRON, Springer;Sapienza Università di Roma, vol. 71(1), pages 39-62, June.
    10. Murray, Paula M. & Browne, Ryan P. & McNicholas, Paul D., 2017. "A mixture of SDB skew-t factor analyzers," Econometrics and Statistics, Elsevier, vol. 3(C), pages 160-168.
    11. Paul D. McNicholas, 2016. "Model-Based Clustering," Journal of Classification, Springer;The Classification Society, vol. 33(3), pages 331-373, October.
    12. Kim, Hyoung-Moon & Maadooliat, Mehdi & Arellano-Valle, Reinaldo B. & Genton, Marc G., 2016. "Skewed factor models using selection mechanisms," Journal of Multivariate Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 145(C), pages 162-177.
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    14. Wan-Lun Wang & Min Liu & Tsung-I Lin, 2017. "Robust skew-t factor analysis models for handling missing data," Statistical Methods & Applications, Springer;Società Italiana di Statistica, vol. 26(4), pages 649-672, November.

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