Exploratory factor analysis (EFA) is a popular statistical technique used to identify the number of factors of a newly developed scale. However, a review of published papers using the above analysis demonstrated that some of the researchers, and even the reviewers, did not fully understand its usage and applications. This symposium provides a tutorial on the application of EFA and its role in the scale development process. Common practices, misunderstanding, and flaws in the application of EFA in research studies will be discussed in more detail. More specifically, a brief discussion will be given on the requirement of sample size for EFA, and a comparison of the factor extraction and rotation methods. Factor coefficients from a real sample will be used to demonstrate the pros and cons of different methods. In addition, a discussion will be provided on the relationship between sample size and factor coefficients, and the different approaches to the determination of the number of factors. Keyword(s): . NA