When is the cluster argument needed?

[Amonet]

Hi all, 

Is it needed to use the cluster argument when building CFA models?

Today I realized I never did this, while my dataset consists of 120+ individuals, measured over 4 time points.

Should I define cluster = 'individuals' in the CFA() or Lavaan() function? 

Or is this cluster argument only useful for multilevel models that is currently not yet fully supported by Lavaan? 

You'll be a life saver if you help me out here :) since I have a deadline already next week. 

Thanks,

Amonet 

[Jeremy Miles]

How are you analyzing the data? If the data are wide -as in, you identify time through the variable labels you don't need the cluster command.

If the data are long (i.e. you have a variable called (something like) time, you need to take into account that you have repeated observations of the same people. However you only have 4 observations, which is not many.

(I would probably treat the data as wide, unless you have a large number of variables.) 

Jeremy

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "lavaan" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to lavaan+un...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to lav...@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/lavaan.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

[Amonet]

Dear Jeremy, 

Thank you for clearing it up for me!

My data is in wide format, so I am glad I can continue as it is.

Kind regards,