Dear R People: Could someone recommend a "baby book" on path analysis and SEM, please? Or if someone has an example that they use in the classroom setting, that would be very cool too. Thanks in advance, Sincerely, Erin -- Erin Hodgess Associate Professor Department of Computer and Mathematical Sciences University of Houston - Downtown mailto: erinm.hodgess at gmail.com
Dear Erin, Although it's very old now, I like Duncan's Introduction to Structural Equation Modeling (Academic Press, 1975); for a more complete treatment, although it too is pretty old, Bollen, Structural Equations with Latent Variables (Wiley, 1989). I have notes and other materials from a short course on SEMs at <http://socserv.mcmaster.ca/jfox/Courses/Brazil-2008/index.html>. I feel compelled to add that one should be very carefully about taking SEMs seriously. Regards, John> -----Original Message----- > From: r-help-bounces at r-project.org [mailto:r-help-bounces at r-project.org]On> Behalf Of Erin Hodgess > Sent: May-29-09 3:28 PM > To: R help > Subject: [R] SEM/path question > > Dear R People: > > Could someone recommend a "baby book" on path analysis and SEM, please? > > Or if someone has an example that they use in the classroom setting, > that would be very cool too. > > Thanks in advance, > Sincerely, > Erin > > > -- > Erin Hodgess > Associate Professor > Department of Computer and Mathematical Sciences > University of Houston - Downtown > mailto: erinm.hodgess at gmail.com > > ______________________________________________ > R-help at r-project.org mailing list > https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help > PLEASE do read the posting guidehttp://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html> and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
Dear Erin:
I do not have a direct answer to your question, but the following
quickly identified for me just now 244 help pages in contributed
packages that mentioned either "path analysis" or "SEM",
sorted to put
first the package with the most such hits:
pa <- RSiteSearch.function('path analysis')
hits(pa) # 193
sem. <- RSiteSearch.function('SEM')
hits(sem.) # 53
pa.sem <- pa|sem.
nrow(pa.sem) # 244; only 2 mentioned both terms
HTML(pa&sem.)
# Open a web browser with links to the 2 in common
HTML(pa.sem)
# Open a web browser with a table linking to all 244,
# with the package with the most such pages first
I also tried Wikipedia for "path analysis" and "sem".
The latter
includes and "external link" to "sem package for R", which
includes, "An
Introduction to Structural Equation Modeling (November 2008, Programa de
Computa??o Cient?fica - FIOCRUZ Rio de Janeiro - Brasil)", which
includes further "Resources" and "Readings". I have not
used this
myself, but John Fox, the author and maintainer of "sem" has
substantial
experience doing this in R. "Old sources" in the CRAN page for
"sem"
lists 27 different releases starting with 0.4-1 in 01-May-2001.
If I wanted to know more about "path analysis" and
"sem", I'd
start with this material by John Fox.
Hope this helps.
Spencer Graves
Erin Hodgess wrote:> Dear R People:
>
> Could someone recommend a "baby book" on path analysis and SEM,
please?
>
> Or if someone has an example that they use in the classroom setting,
> that would be very cool too.
>
> Thanks in advance,
> Sincerely,
> Erin
>
>
>
I've enjoyed Jim Grace's Structural Equation Modeling and Natural Systems http://www.amazon.com/Structural-Equation-Modeling-Natural-Systems/dp/0521546532/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1243719710&sr=8-2 as well as Rex Kline's Principles and Practice of Structural Equation Modeling http://www.amazon.com/Principles-Practice-Structural-Equation-Methodology/dp/1572306904/ref=pd_sim_b_9 On May 29, 2009, at 12:27 PM, Erin Hodgess wrote:> Dear R People: > > Could someone recommend a "baby book" on path analysis and SEM, > please? > > Or if someone has an example that they use in the classroom setting, > that would be very cool too. > > Thanks in advance, > Sincerely, > Erin > > > -- > Erin Hodgess > Associate Professor > Department of Computer and Mathematical Sciences > University of Houston - Downtown > mailto: erinm.hodgess at gmail.com > > ______________________________________________ > R-help at r-project.org mailing list > https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help > PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html > and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.