SEM Series (2016) 4. Confirmatory Factor Analysis Part 1

Model fit during CFA, Validity, Convergent validity, discriminant validity. 2019 UPDATE: during this video I covary errors of some items. This is not good practice. It would be better to remove the redundant items.

[saurab]

Hi James,
I am writing to thank you for sharing your excellent teaching videos publicly. I learned to perform CFA using AMOS watching your videos during my Ph.D. I analyzed to datasets, wrote two papers, now both published. I really wanted to write an email to you to invite you as a coauthor because your role in those papers was significant. Keep sharing and enlightening individuals who all are working to make this world a better place.
Cheers!
Saurab

[abideenadewale]

Thanks James for yet another wonderful and very enlightening video. Just to share and following the suggestions of Barbara Byrne in her book, the metric invariance analysis can also be carried out by using the multiple group analysis option. After specifying the groups and ensuring a configural invariance test is passed, click on Analyse, Multiple Group analysis(you may also select from the icons on the left of the screen), , a message pops up mentioning that some adjustments to the diagram may be made, click okay and an '8 by 8' matrix showing various constraining possibility is displayed. Three models are active. Uncheck all except the first model and first option since we are interested only in the measurement weight. Click ok and your diagram is displayed with various constraining. No problem as only the measurement weights are constrained and active. The default model is automatically changed to the unconstrained model while the other models 1, 2, and 3 are created. Double click on model 3, delete it and model 2 appears. Also delete model 2 and model 1 appears indicating the constraints. Optionally rename model 1 as unconstrained. Both models are now executed with same diagram. You only need to click on the desired model to get the chisquare scores as well as the DF for the metric invariance. I found this approach also quite useful for other types of invariance analysis especially in higher ordered models.

[alamzubair]

Great effort. U made my life easy. I was struck in reading IBM SPSS Statistics by Andy Field. So easy to learn SPSS and AMOS through these videos.

[DoDo-oxyp]

Your videos are so helpful. I appreciate your generosity of sharing your knowledge with us.

[jeroennawijn]

If commas turns out to be an issue, just run "set locale = english" via the syntax and it will give you dots instead of commas. By the way, the dots made it fail for me, it did work with commas.

[hebaelsayedelbdawyahmedhas]

Hello James,

Thank you for your amazing videos. You help me a lot.

The reviewer of my research paper wrote the following question for me: “But there is a question here: the item loading in the CFA should be > 0.60, while in the SEM it should be > 0.708. You kept the items' loading times at 0.708 in the SEM; is there a reason for this?”

In fact, I kept the items that have a factor loading > .50 because I thought that I should only delete items less than .50 in CFA and because their deletion does not improve the AVE (p.s. the AVE was less than .50 and I confirmed Convergent Validity through CR as suggested by Fornell & Larcker, (1981))

Please, I have few questions:

1. I need to know what is the cut off value for the item loading in the CFA, is it .50 or .6o or .708 as the reviewer mentioned?

2. If the cut off value is .50, what is the reference that confirms that I can keep the items with factor loadings greater than .50?

3. What is the reference that mentioned that items with factor loadings less than .60 should be removed from the model?

[abdulmoeed]

How we can calculate the 'Mean and Standard Deviation' for the whole Latent construct as I have seen it in the past papers. They are reporting the 'Means and Standard Deviations' for whole individual Latent constructs. How?

[arifashraf]

Hello Where I can find AMOS EFA-CFA plugin on stat wiki page? I suppose layout of the page is changed now.

[fyrnjhm]

This is great!!! I am learning so much from your channel.

[joannehosny]

My issue is I cannot run the analysis when I have Indices selected. It keeps telling me I have an error and I need to remove that selection. then, it will run. I am also having a not very appealing model fit even when I keep following the system. What does that mean? I have a sample size of 200.

[abdulmoeed]

Do you have any video on the failure of 'Invariance test'. How we can solve this problem if two groups are significantly different from each other? Invariance failed

[bilgetekin]

Dear James thank you for your informative videos. For to do practice, would you please share the data set, you analyse on this video?

[meenu]

What should be the no. Of responses to perform this, if no. Of variables are 34.

[tolgak]

Hey James, you are great at explaining. I never thought it is this simple. However, I have a question, can I run pre-validated, tested and approved academic model in SEM on with CFA analysis only ? Or do you think factors should go through refinement with EFA again ?

[gabrielachaves]

Thank you James, I've learned I lot. I have one question...if I do the model manually, how can I import to AMOS the output of EFA analysis from SPSS? Thank you!

[nsharkasi]

Hi, do we have to assess the data normality to use ML? I saw that we need to use bootstrapping in the case of nonnormal distribution of data, which is most likely the case with Likert scale data. any suggestions, please?

[pedromsmoreiraful]

Hi James,
Thank you for your helpful videos on this topic. From what I understood, you use to same dataset for EFA and CFA. If we have the purpose of validating a particular instrument, shouldn't we split the dataset in order to avoid bias when testing the exploratory structure? Thanks

[atifkhan-zsgt]

Dear james i want to know that is it necessary to check discriminant validity among first order factors while applying second order CFA?

[abdulmoeed]

One more question I need to ask that do we only have to check the CFI, RMSEA by ignoring the GFI and AGFI in Configural Invariance Test? Thanks.
As in your video, GFI and AGFI were very low in Configural Invariance Test but CFI and RMSEA are passing.

[philippvo]

Hallo James,

thank you for your explanations! I have a question regarding the pattern matrix builder plugin. I have amosv24 trial Version and the plugin folder looks Different from yours. where do i have to install the plugin to make it work?