L’intérêt de l’analyse en composantes principales (ACP) pour la recherche en sciences sociales

Abstract

The analysis in principal components (APC) is an extremely powerful tool for synthesis of information, very useful when one is in the presence of a important sum of quantitative information to treat and interpret. The appearance during last years of softwares each time more powerful and easy to use makes today accessible this type of analyses to all the researchers in social sciences, and not only to the specialists. This is why we propose here to present the principle and interest of the ACP, starting from a simple example: an analysis relating to the thirty-two Mexican federal entities founded on 12 socio-economic and cultural demographic variables.

Keywords

• Mexico
• social sciences
• analysis in principal components
• powerful softwares
• 32 federal entities
• 12 variables