Descriptive stats for factors in SEM
John Fox wrote:
Dear Sebastian, What you're looking for are factor-score coefficients, which would allow you to estimate the values of the factors from the observed variables. Then, given the original dataset from which the input-covariance matrix to sem() was computed, you could find the factor scores. The sem packages doesn't provide factor-score coefficients, but this is a reasonable request, and I'll add it to my to-do list. I can't promise when I'll get this done. I'm not sure why you want the means, standard deviations, and correlations of the latent variables. In most models, the means will be 0. You could figure out the covariance matrix of the latent variables; sem()doesn't provide that either.
I was looking at Piccolo, R. F. & COLQUITT, J. A. TRANSFORMATIONAL LEADERSHIP AND JOB BEHAVIORS: THE MEDIATING ROLE OF CORE JOB CHARACTERISTICS Academy of Management Journal, 2006, 49, 327-34 and other articles using SEM and they provide those factor-score coefficents. (pdf for article here: http://www.ximb.ac.in/~jgeorge/transforjobbehavior.pdf , table on p.8) I have never published an SEM model before, so I assume it is standard to provide those. Anyway, thank you for your hint, and thanks for putting it on your TODO list. I am amazed by the speed you were replying, much appreciated. I have just ordered another of your books :-). Sebastian Spaeth