Abstract

The goal of this chapter is to provide a historical account of structural equation modeling (SEM). To do so I followed the development throughout the twentieth century of the main ideas in the four disciplines that contributed to the development of SEM: biometrics, econometrics, psychometrics, and sociometrics. Special attention is paid to the development of path analysis by Wright and its sociological applications. Also presented are the development of estimation procedures and the formulation of identification issues in econometrics and the beginning of exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis in psychology. The last part of this account presents the synthesis of these ideas in the LISREL model as well as extensions of the original model.