Resources for Teaching Structural Equation Modeling
Structural equation modeling (SEM) is a multivariate statistical analysis technique that is used to analyze structural relationships. The method is common in social and behavioral sciences to test and evaluate multivariate causal relationships. SEM is a combination of two statistical methods: confirmatory factor analysis and path analysis, and differs from other modeling approaches. However, it is not usually a core course that is offered in Health Sciences/Biostatistics programs. With the increase in interdisciplinary and cross-disciplinary research, it is a method that I have seen researchers outside of the social sciences interested in learning more about! Learning and teaching a statistical method such as SEM to students and researchers that have very little experience can be a big undertaking, as one needs to develop appropriate material for teaching theory and concepts as well as code for running the analysis.
The blog called Stats of DOOM has a Structural Equation Modeling course that is a great place to start for learning about the basic concepts of SEM and how to conduct analyses using the learnSEM package for R. The website has links to YouTube videos with lectures by Dr. Erin M. Buchanan that can be used for students or researchers to learn a specific aspect of SEM such as exploratory factor analysis or the different terminology used in SEM. In addition, there are links to a GitHub public repository with information about the tutorial package called learnSEM.
The learnSEM package has a tutorial in R for each section of the course with integrated exercises that allow students to work through applications of the concepts using R. The step-by-step exercises for learning the concepts and then applying them in R directly within the web browser tutorial file is an effective way for students to practice writing the R code, running the code, and checking the solution. The tutorials can be used as a way for students to submit an assignment to an instructor or can be used for continuing education development.
The lecture videos are under the Creative Common Attribution license and reuse is allowed.
Citation for Structural Equation Modeling course: Buchanan, E. M. (2020, March 15). Structural Equation Modeling. https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/2Y67F
Other articles and online resources for SEM:
Fan et al.: Applications of structural equation modeling (SEM) in ecological studies: an updated review.
A comprehensive overview of SEM with an example using both R and Python can be found here.
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