This four-volume Major Work contains texts which explore both the foundations of latent variables and factor analysis, and specific contemporary challenges in the field.

The collection has been designed as a multi-disciplinary resource, with literature drawn from many different areas of study, such as sociology, psychology, education and political science.

In the editor's introductory essay, a general approach to the meaning and use of latent variables in the social sciences is laid out, the basics of factor analysis and how it works are explained, and the logic that...

Generating data is the defining aspect of empirical work. Data in this respect is understood as information-capacitated material that must be discovered, mined, unearthed - or a near limitless range of similar adjectives. This major work cross-cuts a number of substantive methodologies and is structured around seven groupings of research in four-volumes which provide the context for data generation:

Volume One: Naturalistic research

Volume Two: Interrogative research and Experimental research

Volume Three:...