title: How to create factors from factanal?
body: <p>When performing a factor analysis using factanal the usual result is some loadings table plus several other information. Is there a direct way to use these loadings to create a matrix / data.frame of factors? For example to use them in regression analysis later on. </p>
  
  <p>EDIT: the purpose of this is to obtain variables for subsequent modeling. I only know of factor scores – but suggestions / pointers to other terminology are welcome :)</p>
  
  <p>EDIT2: Joris Meys answer answer is basically what I was asking for. Still though it moves my question towards a direction that might be better suited for statsoverflow, but I will keep it here for now, because the right group of people is the discussing the solution: </p>
  
  <p>What´s the benefit of the regression based scores? The result of the product (ML) is highly correlated with the factors... Honestly I wonder why the difference is that big in my case?</p>
  
  <pre><code> fa$scores # the correct solution
   fac &lt;- m1 %*% loadings(fa) # the answer on your question
   diag(cor(fac,fa$scores))
   #returns:
  Factor1   Factor2   Factor3 
  0.8309343 0.8272019 0.8070837 
  </code></pre>