The PRIORS statement specifies numeric values between 0.0 and 1.0 for the prior communality estimates for each variable. The first numeric value corresponds to the first variable in the VAR statement, the second value to the second variable, and so on. The number of numeric values must equal the number of variables. For example:

proc factor;
   var     x  y  z;
   priors .7 .8 .9;
run;

You can specify various methods for computing prior communality estimates with the PRIORS= option in the PROC FACTOR statement. Refer to the description of that option for more information about the default prior communality estimates.