Dear Google Answers Experts

I am a lecturer in English and culture at a Japanese university. 
Our language department is thinking of setting up a degree 
consisting of about half language courses and about half "other
courses." We are wondering what "other courses" to put into the mix
(culture, psychology, film studies, literature, commerce, you name it)

I am trying to analyse a survey asking high school students which
courses they are interested in. The high school students all came to
our university open day. I have about 300 respondents (only 108 input
at present) rating 60 courses (including "foreign language")

There are also some questions what do you expect to gain from being 
at university (which includes a response "foreign language study"
as well as "analytical ability," "general education" etc. ).


I am using XLstat to analyse the data. 
http://www.xlstat.com/
I recommend it. You can use it 20 times for free. I am registered.

I am doing a factor analysis. I would like to see what courses factor
with forieng language education. I have perfored a preliminary
analysis
and it seems that the things that I can teach (Internet skills,
psychology)
do not factor with foreign language. There is also a lot of overlap
between
the factors (the last column of the chart shows "Communalities" which
is a measure of overlap.

Another problem is that XLstat does not give the data in the way that
I am
used to with the components ordered for the first second third, etc,
factors.
I think that spss and stat-view give you an indication of what
elements to
include in each factor. What cut off should I use? (.3 or .4 or .35?
and why)

I played around with the varimax rotated chart and tried to identify
some
factors. There is one that is very linguistic but there is so much
overlap.
Does this factor analysis mean anything at all? What does it mean? Do
I
need to have more subjects? What conclusions can I draw. 

I will have more of the data up later 
the first 108 subjects and the factor analysis is here
http://www.bh.wakwak.com/~takemoto/factoranalysis_example.xls
Comments and suggestions would be gratefull recieved. 
Links to pages and paper references would also be great since I am
going to have to write this up. 

This is me
http://www.mii.kurume-u.ac.jp/~leuers/informal-homepage.htm

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Clarification of Question by takemototim-ga on 18 Sep 2002 22:39 PDT

Sorry to be so mean with the price. For a good answer I will pay more
than 10 dollars.

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Clarification of Question by takemototim-ga on 19 Sep 2002 02:54 PDT

I have uploaded a file with 200 respondents data. 
http://www.bh.wakwak.com/~takemoto/factoranalysis_example2.xls
The data is gettng more difficult. 

First of all I am not sure if I am meant to be looking at the 
"Results of the Varimax" of at the "Results of the Factor Analysis"
I thought that the results of the varimax are the results of the factor
analysis, just rearranged. But they seem very different.

Tim

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Clarification of Question by takemototim-ga on 19 Sep 2002 03:12 PDT

I wrote to the maker of XLstate to ask for advice there. 

Is there a bulletin board or homepage for users of xlstat? 
I think that there is but I can not find it on the net. 

In case that there is not, I have created a mailing list 
to exchange ideas on using your wonderful software. 
I am happy to hand over ownership to you. 
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/xlstat/ 



I am not getting anywhere with my factor analysis. 
http://www.bh.wakwak.com/~takemoto/factoranalysis_example2.xls

In the statistics package that I am used to I get a 
result like that below. 
http://trochim.human.cornell.edu/tutorial/flynn/factor.htm

Below is an example of what the factors might look 
like if we rotated them. Notice that the loadings are 
distributed between the factors, and that the results 
are easier to interpret.

Table #3: Rotated Factor Matrix Variables Factor 1 Factor 2 Communality 
Ability to define problems             *.68 .17 .87 
Ability to supervise others            *.87 .24 .79 
Ability to make decisions              *.65 .07 .90 
Ability to build consensus             .16 *.76 .88 
Ability to facilitate decision-making  .30 *.83 .67 
Ability to work on a team              .19 *.69 .72 

But with XLstat

1) The variables are not ordered, nor is there an indication 
of which variables go in which factor. 

2) There are two tables one that calls itself "Principle Factor 
Analysis" and "Results of Varimax Transformation." I am not sure 
which table I should be looking at. I want the "Varimax Transformation 
of the Principle Factor Analysis."  

Tim

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Clarification of Question by takemototim-ga on 19 Sep 2002 08:56 PDT

The full 280 odd respondents have been added together with a factor analysis. 
I don't get this. All of the variables are in the first factor. 

http://www.bh.wakwak.com/~takemoto/factoranalysis_example3.xls

and when the factors have been varimaxed it is no easier to read.

http://www.bh.wakwak.com/~takemoto/varimax.xls

PLease help.