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
