Applied Regression Models in the Social Sciences

In this chapter we present brief discussions of a few statistical topics not covered in earlier chapters. We first cover structural equation models, factor analysis, and path analysis. In future work fitting regression models in the social sciences, we frequently see reference to one or more of them. In the second section of the chapter, we address in summary form a few topics already discussed but which we believe require some additional attention. For instance, as part of our discussion of ordinary least squares regression, we covered in Chapter 8 the topic of regression diagnostics. But regression diagnostics is not an issue applicable only to OLS regression; so we present here a further discussion. Similarly, we expand with some additional commentary our earlier discussions of addressing issues of survey design (covered in Chapter 10) and multilevel models (covered in Chapter 16).