R packages for Structural Equation Model: SEM with R
Structural Equation Model (SEM) was first examined by a software called LISREL. Then, SEM has been mainly run by several proprietary software i.e., Mplus, AMOS, EQS, SAS and a new version of Stata (v.12).
However, you may also run SEM with a great but free software like R.
To the best of my knowledge, there are now four active packages that you can use to fit SEM. Here they are:
Main Packages (for fitting SEM models)
- sem (John Fox, 2006):The first R package for SEM “ fit by maximum likelihood assuming multinormality, and single-equation estimation for observed-variable models by two-stage least.squares.” It was also the first package I tried to run SEM in R. Thanks to a very quick response from Prof.Fox on my question I emailed him.
See Example of ‘sem’ package here.
- OpenMx (Boker et al, 2011)
A very active package that “is free and open source software for use with R that allows estimation of a wide variety of advanced multivariate statistical models.” contributed by experts in R and SEM.
See Example of ‘OpenMx’ package here. - lavaan (Yves Rosseel, 2012)
A promising package for SEM. Its command language is similar to those of Mplus. Hence it is perhaps the most user-friendly package for SEM to date.
See Example of ‘lavaan’ package here.
Link to JSS paper - semPLS (Armin Monecke, 2012)
Fitting Structural Equation Model Using Partial Least Squares
See: CRAN link, JSS paper - plspm (Gaston Sanchez, 2012)
R package dedicated to Partial Least Squares (PLS) methods (CRAN, plsmodeling.com)
by Gaston Sanchez and Laura Trinchera
A corresponding book titled “PLS Path Modeling with R” can be downloaded here.
Today (30 May 2012), I gladly found that there are also complementary packages for SEM in R as follows.
Complementary packages
- SEMplusR: Functions, examples and datasets to learn, use and teach Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) [GitHub]
by Pairach Piboonrungroj - SEMModComp: Model Comparisons for SEM [CRAN link, Additional Documents]
by Roy Levy - semGOF: an add-on package which provides fourteen goodness-of-fit indeces for structural equation models using ‘sem’ package.[CRAN]
by Elena Bertossi - stremo: Functions to help the process of learning structural equation modelling [CRAN link]
by Gustavo Carvalho, Marco Batalha, and Owen Petchey - FIAR: Functional Integration Analysis in R [CRAN link]
by Bjorn Roelstraete - semTools: Useful tools for structural equation modeling [CRAN link]
by Sunthud Pornprasertmanit, Patrick Miller, Alex Schoemann, Yves Rosseel - simsem: SIMulated Structural Equation Modeling [CRAN link]
by Sunthud Pornprasertmanit, Patrick Miller, Alexander Schoemann - pathmox R package dedicated to segmentation trees in PLS Path Modeling [CRAN, plsmodeling.com]
Packages for SEM plotting and graphics
- qgraph: Network representations of relationships in data [CRAN link]
by Sacha Epskamp, Angelique O. J. Cramer, Lourens J. Waldorp, Verena D. Schmittmann and Denny Borsboom - psych: Procedures for Psychological, Psychometric, and Personality Research [CRAN link]
by William Revelle
Packages that link R with other software to fit SEM
More external resources on SEM in R
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I tend to agree with you, lavaan is extremely user friendly, but sem seems to offer a greater variety of test and much needed capabilities that are not (yet?) available in lavaan. Let us encourage the developers of lavaan to extend their package to emulate AMOS and sem more closely.
Dear Faan,
lavaan is really a light and hope. I just met the developer at the useR! 2011 and I could say that there’s a lot more to come from lavaan next version. Also a new version of sem package, with more compact code, will be also released soon!