forum.smartpls.com

Hi everyone!

I have some trouble to interpret the factor scores obtained after conducting the PLS algorithm.

I see they are normally distributed around zero as it is needed to do the iterative OLS regressions.
But i dont know who to explain the factor score itself.
This leads to another problem:
I've got trouble explaining the path coefficient which can be seen, according to Hair et al., as standardized beta coefficients.

For example i've got a UTAUT model and the path coefficient for "performance expectancy" on the "behavioral intention to use" is 0.53.
How to work with it or how to explain the coefficient with which unit?

I´m sorry if this is a stupid question, but I got really trouble getting behind this.

I hope somebody can help me out.
Thanks in advance!

The interpretation of standardized coefficients is: when you increase the IV by one standard deviation, the DV increases by 0.53 standard deviations. It is a dimension-less measure, similar to a correlation (but not necessarily bound between -1 and 1).

If all you indicators are on the same scale you can also use the IPMA to get unstandardized coefficients and unstandardized latent variable scores. However, with typical Likert scale data that is also often not easier to interpret (i.e., an increase of one scale point increase the DV by xy scale points).