Rnest: An R Package for the Next Eigenvalue Sufficiency Test for Factor Analysis
Bibliographic record
Abstract
To address the challenge of determining the number of factors to retain in exploratory factor analysis, a plethora of techniques, called stopping rules, has been developed, compared and widely used among researchers. Despite no definitive solution to this key issue, the recent Next Eigenvalue Sequence Test (NEST) showed interesting properties, such as being theoretically grounded in the factor analysis framework, robustness to cross loadings, a low false positive rate, sensitive to small but true factors, and better accuracy and unbiased compared to traditional stopping rules. Despite these strengths, there is no existing software readily available for researcher. These considerations have led to the development of the R package Rnest. This paper introduces NEST, presents the functionality of the Rnest package, and illustrates its workflow using a reproducible data example. By providing a practical and reliable approach to factor retention, this package aims to encourage its widespread adoption among practitioners, psychometricians, and methodological researchers conducting exploratory factor analyses.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.014 | 0.148 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.004 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.002 | 0.004 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.004 | 0.004 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.003 | 0.003 |
| Open science | 0.003 | 0.004 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.004 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.064 | 0.036 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".