This document provides an overview of factor analysis, including its purposes, key steps, and assumptions. Factor analysis is used to reduce a large set of variables into a smaller set of underlying factors or dimensions while preserving as much of the original information as possible. The main steps are designing the analysis, selecting variables, ensuring sufficient sample size, checking assumptions, extracting factors, interpreting the results, and rotating factors to aid interpretation. The goal is to identify the fundamental constructs or dimensions that explain relationships among variables.