Abstract
Exploratory factor analysis is a statistical method for analyzing quantitative data; however, qualitative data are often observed in psychological and/or social sciences. Several exploratory factor analysis methods have been developed in previous studies to analyze qualitative data. In this paper, we focus on nonmetric factor analysis and discuss the similarities and differences between the models and estimation methods presented in literature. Then, we show that studies on the interpretability of solutions via matrix decomposition factor analysis can be extended to nonmetric factor analysis. Finally, future issues associated with nonmetric factor analysis are discussed.
