estimate_control: Control objects for estimation and rotation settings

In EFAtools: Fast and Flexible Implementations of Exploratory Factor Analysis Tools

Control objects for estimation and rotation settings

Description

estimate_control() and rotate_control() collect the estimation and rotation tuning arguments of a factor analysis into two small, validated objects. They are a declarative surface over the same settings resolved internally by the package's estimation and rotation engines, so that a fit's many tuning knobs can be prepared, inspected, and reused as a single value instead of being passed one by one.

Usage

estimate_control(
  type = c("EFAtools", "psych", "SPSS", "none"),
  init_comm = NA,
  criterion = NA,
  criterion_type = NA,
  max_iter = NA,
  abs_eigen = NA,
  start_method = "psych",
  fiml_max_iter = 500,
  fiml_tol = 1e-05
)

rotate_control(
  type = c("EFAtools", "psych", "SPSS", "none"),
  normalize = TRUE,
  precision = 1e-05,
  order_type = NA,
  varimax_type = NA,
  p_type = NA,
  k = NA,
  random_starts = 100,
  ...
)

Arguments

type	character. One of "EFAtools" (default), "psych", "SPSS", or "none". Selects the preset that fills the NA-defaulted knobs below when the control is used to fit a model.
init_comm	character. Method for the initial communalities in principal axis factoring: "smc" (squared multiple correlations), "mac" (maximum absolute correlations), or "unity". NA (default) resolves from type.
criterion	numeric. The convergence criterion for principal axis factoring: iteration stops once the change in communalities falls below it. A single number greater than 0 and smaller than 1; NA (default) resolves from type.
criterion_type	character. The convergence criterion type for principal axis factoring: "max_individual" (the largest change in any communality, as in SPSS) or "sum" (the change in the summed communalities, as in psych::fa()). NA (default) resolves from type.
max_iter	numeric. The maximum number of principal-axis-factoring iterations before the procedure is halted with a warning. A single whole number of at least 1; NA (default) resolves from type.
abs_eigen	logical. Which algorithm the principal-axis-factoring iterations use: FALSE computes the loadings from the eigenvalues (as in psych::fa()); TRUE uses the absolute eigenvalues (as in SPSS). NA (default) resolves from type.
start_method	character. Starting values for the maximum-likelihood optimiser: "psych" (default, the psych::fa() starts) or "factanal" (the stats::factanal() starts); abbreviations are matched. Not governed by type. Only maximum likelihood uses it, so NA leaves it unset and is rejected only by a fit that is actually run with estimator = "ML".
fiml_max_iter	numeric. The maximum number of EM iterations used to estimate the two-stage full-information maximum-likelihood moments from raw data with missing values (cor_method = "fiml"); the last iterate is returned, with a warning, if the cap is reached. A single whole number of at least 1; default 500. Not governed by type, and unused by every other correlation method. The EM converges linearly and needs more iterations the larger the fraction of missing information, so raise it when a fit reports that the moments did not converge.
fiml_tol	numeric. The convergence tolerance of that EM: iteration stops once the largest change in the standardized moments (the standardized means, log-variances, and correlations) falls below it, so it does not depend on the variables' measurement scale. A single number greater than 0 and smaller than 1 (at or above 1 the criterion is met immediately and the starting moments would be returned as converged); default 1e-5. Not governed by type.
normalize	logical. If TRUE (default), a Kaiser normalization is performed before the rotation. The one knob that is always on unless you turn it off with FALSE.
precision	numeric. The convergence tolerance of the rotation procedure. A single number greater than 0 and at most 1; default 1e-5. Each rotation stage monitors its own quantity, so the same number is not the same tolerance everywhere: varimax_type = "kaiser" stops on the absolute change in the varimax simplicity criterion, which is an average over variables (and so does not scale with how many there are) but rises with the number of factors, roughly toward 1 - 1 / n_factors, so a fixed value is a relatively weaker tolerance the more factors are extracted; varimax_type = "svd" stops on the relative change in the singular values (as in stats::varimax()); and the criterion rotations fitted by gradient projection stop when the projected-gradient norm falls below it. Promax inherits whichever of the two varimax tests its varimax_type selects, because it rotates a varimax base.
order_type	character. How the factors are ordered: "eigen" (by descending sum of squared loadings, as in psych::fa()) or "ss_factors" (by descending unweighted sum of squared loadings). NA (default) resolves from type.
varimax_type	character. The varimax variant used (for the varimax and promax rotations): "svd" (as in stats::varimax()) or "kaiser" (the SPSS / Kaiser (1958) procedure). NA (default) resolves from type.
p_type	character. How the promax target matrix is computed: "unnorm" (the unnormalized target of Hendrickson & White (1964), also used by psych and stats) or "norm" (the normalized target used by SPSS). NA (default) resolves from type.
k	numeric. The promax power (for the target matrix) or the number of near-zero loadings for simplimax. A single number greater than 0; NA (default) leaves it to the fit (the type-dependent promax value, or nrow(loadings) for simplimax). Simplimax counts loadings, so a fit using it additionally requires a whole number no larger than the number of loadings in the solution; promax's power has no such restriction.
random_starts	numeric. The number of random starts used by the criterion-based rotations to guard against local minima. A single whole number of at least 0, where 0 runs the rotation from its warm start only; default 100. The default suffices for the smooth criteria; simplimax remains materially start-dependent at it, so raise it there (see the Rotations section of efa_fit()).
...	Additional arguments forwarded to the rotation engine. Only the names a rotation engine can consume are accepted: maxit (a whole number of at least 0 bounding a single gradient-projection optimization – the multi-start search runs several of them and each is bounded separately, so it is not a budget for the run as a whole; varimax and promax have no such stage and take only precision), and the criterion parameters gam (oblimin; gam = 0 is the recommended default, and larger values increasingly reward correlated factors and can drive the solution toward factor collapse, so inspect Phi before interpreting a fit with gam > 0) and delta (geomin; a positive number, default 0.01); anything else is rejected as a misspelling. They are stored in extra_args and passed on to the rotation engine when the control is used to fit a model; an extra a given fit's rotation does not consume is ignored by that fit, so one control can serve fits with different rotations. An estimation knob (which belongs in estimate_control()) or one of the former spellings P_type and randomStarts is likewise rejected here, because the fit would silently drop it.

Details

Each argument that governs a type preset defaults to NA, meaning "leave this knob to the preset". Setting type to one of "EFAtools", "psych", or "SPSS" fills those knobs from the corresponding preset when the fit is run; setting type = "none" requires the relevant knobs to be supplied explicitly. The control object only records the chosen type and the knobs you set: the preset is resolved (and any "argument set alongside type" warning issued) when the object is used to fit a model, exactly as it is today, because which preset applies depends on the estimator and rotation.

Value

estimate_control() returns a list of class efa_estimate_control with the components type, init_comm, criterion, criterion_type, max_iter, abs_eigen, start_method, fiml_max_iter, and fiml_tol. rotate_control() returns a list of class efa_rotate_control with the components type, normalize, precision, order_type, varimax_type, p_type, k, random_starts, and extra_args (a named list of any additional arguments forwarded to the rotation engine).

See Also

efa_fit(), which takes both controls; efa_retain(), the retention criteria, and efa_schmid_leiman(), which take an estimate_control for the fits they run.

Other Control functions: print.efa_control

Examples

# Estimation knobs taken entirely from a preset:
estimate_control(type = "SPSS")

# A preset with one knob pinned to a non-preset value:
estimate_control(type = "EFAtools", max_iter = 500)

# Every knob supplied explicitly (type = "none"):
estimate_control(type = "none", init_comm = "smc", criterion = 1e-3,
                 criterion_type = "sum", max_iter = 300, abs_eigen = TRUE)


# Rotation knobs taken from a preset:
rotate_control(type = "psych")

# A criterion-specific extra argument, forwarded to the rotation engine:
rotate_control(type = "EFAtools", k = 3, gam = 0.5)

EFAtools documentation built on Aug. 21, 2026, 5:16 p.m.