Assessing the Differences in Korean View on National Economic Policy with Factor and Cluster Analysis

In this study, factor and cluster analysis have been conducted to group the differences in Korean view on national economic policy in the sample of the 2006 Korean General Social Survey (KGSS). According to the 2006 KGSS, the 6 items with a 5-point Likert scale include the questions about whether or the extent to which each respondent supports the specific types of governmental economic policy. In our study, at first, the factor analysis has converted the original 6 items into the 3 composite variables that account for 81% in the total variability. As the second step of factor analysis, factor scores have been computed. Then, the K-means cluster analysis based on the factor scores has been conducted to group the survey respondents into the 3 clusters. In particular, the cross-tabulation analysis has shown that the distribution of the 3 clusters varies with the respondents' socio-demographic characteristics.