The Implementation of Nonlinear Principal Component Analysis to Acquire the Demography of Latent Variable Data (A Study Case on Brawijaya University Students)

Nonlinear principal component analysis is used for data that has a mixed scale. This study uses a formative measurement model by combining metric and nonmetric data scales. The variable used in this study is the demographic variable. This study aims to obtain the principal component of the latent demographic variable and to identify the strongest indicators of demographic formers with mixed scales using samples of students of Brawijaya University based on predetermined indicators. The data used in this study are primary data with research instruments in the form of questionnaires distributed to research respondents, which are active students of Brawijaya University Malang. The used method is nonlinear principal component analysis. There are nine indicators specified in this study, namely gender, regional origin, father's occupation, mother's occupation, type of place of residence, father's last education, mother's last education, parents' income per month, and students' allowance per month. The result of this study shows that the latent demographic variable with samples of a student at Brawijaya University can be obtained by calculating its component scores. The nine indicators formed in PC1 or X1 were able to store diversity or information by 19.49%, while the other 80.51% of diversity or other information was not saved in this PC. From these indicators, the strongest indicator in forming latent demographic variables with samples of a student of Brawijaya University is the origin of the region (I2) and type of residence (I5).