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ERIC Number: EJ1448539
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2024
Pages: 16
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-1070-5511
EISSN: EISSN-1532-8007
Available Date: 0000-00-00
Scale-Invariance, Equivariance and Dependency of Structural Equation Models
Ke-Hai Yuan; Ling Ling; Zhiyong Zhang
Structural Equation Modeling: A Multidisciplinary Journal, v31 n6 p1027-1042 2024
Data in social and behavioral sciences typically contain measurement errors and do not have predefined metrics. Structural equation modeling (SEM) is widely used for the analysis of such data, where the scales of the manifest and latent variables are often subjective. This article studies how the model, parameter estimates, their standard errors (SEs), and the corresponding z-statistics are affected by the scales of the manifest and latent variables. Analytical and empirical results show that (1) the normal-distribution-based likelihood ratio statistic is scale-invariant with respect to scale changes of manifest and latent variables as well as to anchor change of latent variables; (2) the normal-distribution-based maximum likelihood (NML) parameter estimates are scale-equivariant with respect to scale-change of manifest and latent variables as well as to anchor change of latent variables; (3) standard errors (SEs) following the NML method are parallel-scale-equivariant with respect to scale changes of the manifest and latent variables; and (4) the z-statistics are scale-invariant with respect to scale changes of the manifest and latent variables. However, only (1) and (2) hold if latent variables are rescaled by changing anchors. Nevertheless, parameters that are not directly related to latent variables with changing anchors are still scale-equivariant and their z-statistics are still scale-invariant. The results are expected to advance understanding of SEM analysis, and also facilitate result interpretation and comparison across studies as in meta analysis.
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Related Records: ED671073
Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: Institute of Education Sciences (ED)
Authoring Institution: N/A
IES Funded: Yes
Grant or Contract Numbers: R305D210023
Author Affiliations: N/A