Rather, most of them seem to represent general
guidelines developed from substantial experience on
the part of their supporters. Some authors (e.g., Comrey
& Lee, 1992) placed the sample size question into
the context of the need to make standard errors of
correlation coefficients adequately small so that ensuing
factor analyses of those correlations would
yield stable solutions. It is interesting that a number of
important references on factor analysis make no explicit
recommendation at all about sample size. These
include books by Harman (1976), Law ley and Maxwell
(1971), McDonald (1985), and Mulaik (1972).