how are the P-values of indirect and total effects of an exogenous varible calculated in lavaan?

[chenb...@gmail.com]

Hi all,

Nowadays I have checked planty of packages for SEM analysis. It seems that only the lavaan package can show the statistical significance (P-value) of the indirect and total effects of an exogenous varible. So I am quite curious about their methodological bases.

Cheers,

Bin

[Terrence Jorgensen]

It seems that only the lavaan package can show the statistical significance (P-value) of the indirect and total effects of an exogenous varible.

I know at least Mplus provides tests in the output when using the MODEL INDIRECT command in the input file.

So I am quite curious about their methodological bases.

Mplus (see Chapter 17 of the user manual) and lavaan both use the delta method by default to calculate SEs, and bootstrap SEs are also also available.

http://lavaan.ugent.be/tutorial/mediation.html

Terrence D. Jorgensen

Postdoctoral Researcher, Methods and Statistics

Research Institute for Child Development and Education, the University of Amsterdam

UvA web page: http://www.uva.nl/profile/t.d.jorgensen