The nine questions which cover United States policy options toward Cuba were analyzed to determining how they could be grouped as involving similar underlying factors. The questions were first recoded so that positive values reflected "hard-line" positions. A score of 1 is "soft", 4 is "hard-line". The question on favoring support for human rights groups in Cuba was arbitrarily recoded so the hard-line position was to oppose support for these groups.
Since this is an exploratory analysis Pearson correlations were done on the 1 to 4 scaled scores. Factor analysis is a search for some of many plausible underlying factors. Thus while it is informative, the final analysis will need to use specific variables each of which have the highest loading on their factor to represent the factor. This will allow some determination of the importance of individual variables.
As might be suspected the three factors for the most part reflect the organization of the questionnaire into sets of contiguous questions. Some suggestion as to more subtle connotations of the factors can be obtained by looking at loading of variables on other factors than their main one (at least somewhat legitimate as a heuristic exercise since almost all of the correlations are significant, but not definitive for the same reason--slight changes could produce different looking factors).
Opposing human rights organizations in Cuba is negatively loaded on factor 1. This would suggest that factor 1 involves opposing the Cuban government. Factor 2 (use of military force against the Cuban government) is positively related to opposing human rights organizations which would presumably oppose such actions. This kind of reasoning gave rise to the descriptions of what the factors might possibly be below.
Factor 1 Factor 2 Factor 3
POSSIBLE DESCRIPTIONS OF oppose favor favor
FACTORS ------> legitimacy use of US control of
of Cuban external Cuban economy
government force until change
LEGIT EXFORCE ECONFREE
rotated factor scores
3. Oppose U.S companies to sell food .85075 .12338 .14806
2. Oppose companies to sell medicine .81045 .09153 .12533
7. Oppose establish national dialog .36862 .10201 .17474
6. Oppose human rights groups inside Cuba -.18519 .11902 .13140
5. Support exile military action .05141 .98745 .14593
4. Support U.S. military action .12385 .47822 .18441
12. Penalizing foreign companies with Cuba biz .15697 .13014 .74795
8. Prohibit U.S. companies from Cuba biz .03769 .06450 .42713
13. Allow to sue for seized property .09826 .16472 .41270
CORRELATION MATRIX
2 3 4 5 6 7 8 12
medicine food USmil exilemil rights dialog USbiz fornbiz
3 food .72108
4 USmil .18026 .17318
5 exilemil .15033 .18719 .50550
6 rights -.12187 -.10894 .00095 .12722
7 dialog .31555 .35328 .17225 .14517 -.13853
8 USbiz .10757 .09796 .12201 .12795 .11112 .06248
12 fornbiz .23274 .25879 .21130 .24573 .07684 .21383 .33553
13 sue .12783 .17702 .19729 .22791 .07142 .13519 .17432 .34540
Factor analysis used mle extraction, varimax rotation.