Emphasizing causation as a functional relationship between variables, this book provides comprehensive coverage on the basics of SEM. It takes readers through the process of identifying, estimating, analyzing, and evaluating a range of models. The author discusses the history and philosophy of causality and its place in science and presents graph theory as a tool for the design and analysis of causal models. He explains how the algorithms in SEM are derived and how they work, covers various indices and tests for evaluating the fit of structural equation models to data, and explores recent research in graph theory, path tracing rules, and model evaluation.

When the first edition of this Handbook was fields are likely to be hard reading, but anyone who wants to get in touch with the published in 1966 I scarcely gave thought to a future edition. Its whole purpose was to growing edges will find something to meet his inaugurate a radical new outlook on ex taste. perimental psychology, and if that could be Of course, this book will need teachers. As accomplished it was sufficient reward. In the it supersedes the narrow conceptions of 22 years since we have seen adequate-indeed models and statistics still taught as bivariate staggering-evidence that the growth of a new and ANOV A methods of experiment, in so branch of psychological method in science has many universities, those universities will need become established. The volume of research to expand their faculties with newly trained has grown apace in the journals and has young people. The old vicious circle of opened up new areas and a surprising increase obsoletely trained members turning out new of knowledge in methodology. obsoletely trained members has to be The credit for calling attention to the need recognized and broken. And wherever re for new guidance belongs to many members search deals with integral wholes-in per of the Society of Multivariate Experimental sonalities, processes, and groups-researchers Psychology, but the actual innervation is due will recognize the vast new future that to the skill and endurance of one man, John multivariate methods open up.

"This accessible volume presents both the mechanics of structural equation modeling (SEM) and specific SEM strategies and applications. The editor, along with an international group of contributors, and editorial advisory board are leading methodologists who have organized the book to move from simpler material to more statistically complex modeling approaches. Sections cover the foundations of SEM; statistical underpinnings, from assumptions to model modifications; steps in implementation, from data preparation through writing the SEM report; and basic and advanced applications, including new and emerging topics in SEM. Each chapter provides conceptually oriented descriptions, fully explicated analyses, and engaging examples that reveal modeling possibilities for use with readers' data. Many of the chapters also include access to data and syntax files at the companion website, allowing readers to try their hands at reproducing the authors' results"--

The application and interpretation of statistics are central to ecological study and practice. Ecologists are now asking more sophisticated questions than in the past. These new questions, together with the continued growth of computing power and the availability of new software, have created a new generation of statistical techniques. These have resulted in major recent developments in both our understanding and practice of ecological statistics. This novel book synthesizes a number of these changes, addressing key approaches and issues that tend to be overlooked in other books such as missing/censored data, correlation structure of data, heterogeneous data, and complex causal relationships. These issues characterize a large proportion of ecological data, but most ecologists' training in traditional statistics simply does not provide them with adequate preparation to handle the associated challenges. Uniquely, Ecological Statistics highlights the underlying links among many statistical approaches that attempt to tackle these issues. In particular, it gives readers an introduction to approaches to inference, likelihoods, generalized linear (mixed) models, spatially or phylogenetically-structured data, and data synthesis, with a strong emphasis on conceptual understanding and subsequent application to data analysis. Written by a team of practicing ecologists, mathematical explanations have been kept to the minimum necessary. This user-friendly textbook will be suitable for graduate students, researchers, and practitioners in the fields of ecology, evolution, environmental studies, and computational biology who are interested in updating their statistical tool kits. A companion web site provides example data sets and commented code in the R language.

This book has been replaced by Principles and Practice of Structural Equation Modeling, Fifth Edition, ISBN 978-1-4625-5191-0.

This book goes beyond the truism that 'correlation does not imply causation' and explores the logical and methodological relationships between correlation and causation. It presents a series of statistical methods that can test, and potentially discover, cause-effect relationships between variables in situations in which it is not possible to conduct randomised or experimentally controlled experiments. Many of these methods are quite new and most are generally unknown to biologists. In addition to describing how to conduct these statistical tests, the book also puts the methods into historical context and explains when they can and cannot justifiably be used to test or discover causal claims. Written in a conversational style that minimises technical jargon, the book is aimed at practising biologists and advanced students, and assumes only a very basic knowledge of introductory statistics.