PVE & convergent validity

[s6 ljh]

Hi!!

I want to ask a quick question. PVE results from my research are 0.493. does it can pass convergent validity assesment? and is it allowed to only see the value of the loading results in assessing convergent validity? thanks!

[heungsun.hwang]

As in principal components analysis, PVE shows how much the total variance of a block of composite indicators is explained by its corresponding component on average. If a single component explains 70% or higher of the total variance of a block of composite indicators, this may be indicative of unidimensionality for the block (Jolliffe & Cadman, 2016). In your case, PVE = .49, which is lower than the criterion to claim that there is only one component for the indicators. At the same time, you would need to check whether all component loadings are statistically signficant, large in size, and substantively meaningful. 

Please note that in GSCA, we don't use the term convergent validity any longer, which is consistent with factor-based SEM, not component-based SEM. This is also related to why we replace AVE with PVE as AVE is computed based on "factor" loadings. I believe the same terminology goes to PLS or PLS-SEM. 

Best,

Heungsun