Confirmatory Factor Analysis Compared with Principal Component Analysis to Derive Dietary Patterns: A Longitudinal Study in Adult Women

Principal component analysis (PCA) has been used extensively to derive dietary patterns. We proposed to use confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) in the same context as PCA--as a one-step approach--to derive dietary patterns.The first aim of this study was methodologic and was to compare dietary patterns derived with the use of PCA and CFA, used as equivalent one-step approaches. The second aim of this study was to study these patterns in...