st: factor analysis - calculating Crohnbach's alpha

[Kerry MacQuarrie <Kerry.MacQuarrie@icfi.com>]

The last time I conducted exploratory factor analysis, I was using SPSS because that is the software my overseas partners had.  Now I'm trying to figure out how to do a similar analysis in Stata.

I will be using principal components factor extraction methods and promax rotation.  I've quickly figured out the syntax for these two steps.  However, I next want to assess each factor for internal reliability (interitem correlation) using Crohnbach's alpha.  This is where I am uncertain.  It appears that I can do the following (see line 3 of code)

Factor varlist, pcf 
Rotate, oblique promax(#)
Alpha varlist, generate newvar

Where varlist is a manually inserted list of each item that loaded onto the factor and newvar is the factor label; and where this line is repeated for each of the factors that I want to retain.

Is there an easier way to do this?  A way to make the last step automatic for each factor extracted? It seems to me that SPSS automatically generated a table with each factor and its items' factor loadings and the Crohnbach's alpha for each factor.  I'd hate to think that SPSS is actually superior to Stata (gasp!) in this regard. Surely, I'm mistaken here.

Thanks for any pointers!

Kerry MacQuarrie



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