Analysis of Commonality:
Analysis of commonality is a method for causal modeling . In a simple case of two independent variables x1 and x2 , for example, analysis of commonality posits three sources of causation, described by three latent variables: u1 and u2 , which reflect the unique contributions of x1 and x2 respectively, and c12 - the contribution from the sources common to x1 and x2 .
In other words, analysis of commonality in this example pretends to partition the variance of the dependent variable explained by independent variables x1 and x2 into independent contributions from latent variables u1, u2, c12 .