ABSTRACT
The earliest factor analysts during the rst three decades of the twentieth century were British psychologists who were intellectual descendents of Charles Spearman, who had invented the model of common-factor analysis in 1904. They tended to favor a hierarchical interpretation of the factors. With tests of mental abilities, they interpreted the rst factor, as Spearman’s general factor g, found among all or almost all of the variables. Succeeding factors were found among decreasing numbers of observed variables. For tests of mental ability, this was the way, they believed, the mind was organized. Later they modi ed the solution, in what was known as the multiple groups solutions, in which the rst factor was still a general factor, but subsequent factors were associated with somewhat nonoverlapping sets of variables, known as “group factors.”
