Product Description
In this new edition, the author updates and revised his already proven approach to the entire family of latent-variable models for analysis of social science data. Accessible and suitably broad in its scope, it will appeal to a wide range of researchers.
Synopsis
This book is intended as an introduction to a growing area in social science methodology - the use of multiple-latent-variable models. Psychologists and other social scientists have long been familiar with one subvariety of such modelling - exploratory factor analysis. In recent decades, confirmatory factor analysis, path analysis, and structural equation modelling have come out of specialized niches and are making their bid to become basic tools in the research repertoire of social scientists, particularly those whose data involve complex real-life phenomena in the round. These include, among others, sociologists; political scientists; social, educational, clinical, industrial, personality and developmental psychologists; and marketing researchers. The author utilizes path diagrams to explain the underlying relationships in multiple-latent-variable models. He also provides an appendix on elementary matrix algebra for those who do not have an extensive mathematical background. The book is not closely tied to a particular computer program or package; however, special attention is paid to two leaders in the field (LISREL and EQS).
Users should have access to a latent-variable model-fitting program on the order of LISREL, EQS, CALIS, AMOS, Mx, RAMONA, or SEPATH, and an exploratory factor analysis package such as those in SPSS or SAS. In some places, a matrix manipulation facility such as that found in MINITAB, SAS or SPSS would be useful.
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