IS IT POSSIBLE TO REPLACE FACTOR ANALYSIS MODELING (FAM) WITH INTERPRETIVE STRUCTURAL MODELING (ISM) IN EDUCATION RESEARCH?

Educational researchers usually make use of factor analysis statistics in order to achieve a simpler combination of a group of correlated components. Experiences have revealed that this method, besides its need to high costs and large sample size, often face conceptual and constructive confusion in its final results. The aim of the present article is to investigate the possibility of replacing Interpretive Structural Modeling (Proposed by J. Warfield in 1973) with factor analysis model in education research. The approach of the study was the mixed method and the population included those educational research studies which have used FAM for factoring and modeling. Some of these research studies were selected as samples based on (the) purposeful sampling and restudied based on the ISM. ISM indexes such as adjacent matrix, structural self-interaction matrix and reachability matrix were used for gathering and analyzing the data. The results showed that it was possible to replace ISM instead of FAM, and also when carrying on factoring and modeling by ISM in compared with FAM, the research efficacy increases and more valid and effective results will come out.