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Creating Misspecified Models in Moment Structure Analysis

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2025

Keke Lai*
Affiliation:
University of California
*
Correspondence should be made to Keke Lai, Psychological Sciences, University of California,Merced, CA 95343, USA. Email: KLai25@UCmerced.edu
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Abstract

To understand how SEM methods perform in practice where models always have misfit, simulation studies often involve incorrect models. To create a wrong model, traditionally one specifies a perfect model first and then removes some paths. This approach becomes difficult or even impossible to implement in moment structure analysis and fails to control the amounts of misfit separately and precisely for the mean and covariance parts. Most importantly, this approach assumes a perfect model exists and wrong models can eventually be made perfect, whereas in practice models are all implausible if taken literally and at best provide approximations of the real world. To improve the traditional approach, we propose a more realistic and flexible way to create model misfit for multiple group moment structure analysis. Given (a) the model μ(·)\documentclass[12pt]{minimal}\usepackage{amsmath}\usepackage{wasysym}\usepackage{amsfonts}\usepackage{amssymb}\usepackage{amsbsy}\usepackage{mathrsfs}\usepackage{upgreek}\setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt}\begin{document}$$\varvec{{{\upmu }}} (\cdot ) $$\end{document} and Σ(·)\documentclass[12pt]{minimal}\usepackage{amsmath}\usepackage{wasysym}\usepackage{amsfonts}\usepackage{amssymb}\usepackage{amsbsy}\usepackage{mathrsfs}\usepackage{upgreek}\setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt}\begin{document}$$\varvec{{\Sigma }} (\cdot ) $$\end{document}, (b) population model parameters θ0\documentclass[12pt]{minimal}\usepackage{amsmath}\usepackage{wasysym}\usepackage{amsfonts}\usepackage{amssymb}\usepackage{amsbsy}\usepackage{mathrsfs}\usepackage{upgreek}\setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt}\begin{document}$$\varvec{{{\uptheta }}} _0$$\end{document}, and (c) F1\documentclass[12pt]{minimal}\usepackage{amsmath}\usepackage{wasysym}\usepackage{amsfonts}\usepackage{amssymb}\usepackage{amsbsy}\usepackage{mathrsfs}\usepackage{upgreek}\setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt}\begin{document}$$F_1$$\end{document} and F2\documentclass[12pt]{minimal}\usepackage{amsmath}\usepackage{wasysym}\usepackage{amsfonts}\usepackage{amssymb}\usepackage{amsbsy}\usepackage{mathrsfs}\usepackage{upgreek}\setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt}\begin{document}$$F_2$$\end{document} specified by the researcher, our method creates μ∗\documentclass[12pt]{minimal}\usepackage{amsmath}\usepackage{wasysym}\usepackage{amsfonts}\usepackage{amssymb}\usepackage{amsbsy}\usepackage{mathrsfs}\usepackage{upgreek}\setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt}\begin{document}$$\varvec{{{\upmu }}} ^*$$\end{document} and Σ∗\documentclass[12pt]{minimal}\usepackage{amsmath}\usepackage{wasysym}\usepackage{amsfonts}\usepackage{amssymb}\usepackage{amsbsy}\usepackage{mathrsfs}\usepackage{upgreek}\setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt}\begin{document}$$\varvec{{\Sigma }} ^*$$\end{document} to simultaneously satisfy (a) θ0=argminF[μ∗,Σ∗;μ(·),Σ(·)]\documentclass[12pt]{minimal}\usepackage{amsmath}\usepackage{wasysym}\usepackage{amsfonts}\usepackage{amssymb}\usepackage{amsbsy}\usepackage{mathrsfs}\usepackage{upgreek}\setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt}\begin{document}$$\varvec{{{\uptheta }}} _0 = \arg \min F[\varvec{{{\upmu }}} ^*, \varvec{{\Sigma }} ^*; \varvec{{{\upmu }}} (\cdot ), \varvec{{\Sigma }} (\cdot )]$$\end{document}, (b) the mean structure’s misfit equals F1\documentclass[12pt]{minimal}\usepackage{amsmath}\usepackage{wasysym}\usepackage{amsfonts}\usepackage{amssymb}\usepackage{amsbsy}\usepackage{mathrsfs}\usepackage{upgreek}\setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt}\begin{document}$$F_1$$\end{document}, and (c) the covariance structure’s misfit equals F2\documentclass[12pt]{minimal}\usepackage{amsmath}\usepackage{wasysym}\usepackage{amsfonts}\usepackage{amssymb}\usepackage{amsbsy}\usepackage{mathrsfs}\usepackage{upgreek}\setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt}\begin{document}$$F_2$$\end{document}.

Information

Type
Original Paper
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BY
This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made.
Copyright
Copyright © 2019 The Psychometric Society
Figure 0

Figure 1. Path diagram of Model 1 used in introduction and Demonstration 1. Values are the population model parameters specified by the researcher. Parameters originating from the triangle “1” have the label “a.” Single-headed arrows from one variable to another have the label “b.” Double-headed arrows have the label “c”.

Figure 1

Table 1. Population model-implied moments and four generated moments with specified misfit and parameter values in Demonstration 1.

Figure 2

Table 2. Population fit indices and FML\documentclass[12pt]{minimal}\usepackage{amsmath}\usepackage{wasysym}\usepackage{amsfonts}\usepackage{amssymb}\usepackage{amsbsy}\usepackage{mathrsfs}\usepackage{upgreek}\setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt}\begin{document}$$\hbox {F}_\mathrm{ML}$$\end{document} values after removing a parameter from the model in Demonstration 1.

Figure 3

Table 3. Residuals or model-implied moments after removing a parameter from Model 1 in Demonstration 1.

Figure 4

Figure 2. Path diagram of Model 2 used to introduce new notations for our proposed method in the multiple group context. The latent mean is fixed at 0 in Group 1, but freely estimated in Group 2. All the factor loadings and intercepts are constrained equal across the two groups. The parameters constrained to be equal across groups are considered as the same parameter, but have different labels (e.g., a1(1)\documentclass[12pt]{minimal}\usepackage{amsmath}\usepackage{wasysym}\usepackage{amsfonts}\usepackage{amssymb}\usepackage{amsbsy}\usepackage{mathrsfs}\usepackage{upgreek}\setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt}\begin{document}$$a^{(1)}_1$$\end{document} and a1(2)\documentclass[12pt]{minimal}\usepackage{amsmath}\usepackage{wasysym}\usepackage{amsfonts}\usepackage{amssymb}\usepackage{amsbsy}\usepackage{mathrsfs}\usepackage{upgreek}\setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt}\begin{document}$$a^{(2)}_1$$\end{document} are the same parameters, but have two different labels).

Figure 5

Table 4. Population model parameter values for the simulation study in Demonstration 2.

Figure 6

Table 5. Relative bias of point estimates and of standard errors for selected model parameters in Demonstration 2.

Figure 7

Table 6. Residuals for fitting Model 1 to population moments created with fixed initial values.

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