ABSTRACT
Most factor analyses reported in the literature appear to have been concerned with exploration rather than hypothesis testing. Not hypothesizing a specific number of factors gives rise to the question of the "proper'' number of factors to be extracted from a correlation matrix. In the search for new ways to conceptual ize a domain, investigators have used objective procedures to determine the number of factors that they should extract. These procedures are based upon the characteristics of the data itself rather than upon knowledge of the area or a set of hypotheses.
