Structural equation models and the quantification of behavior.

Abstract

Quantifying behavior often involves using variables that contain measurement errors and formulating multiequations to capture the relationship among a set of variables. Structural equation models (SEMs) refer to modeling techniques popular in the social and behavioral sciences that are equipped to handle multiequation models, multiple measures of concepts, and measurement error. This work provides an overview of latent variable SEMs. We present the equations for SEMs and the steps in modeling, and we provide three illustrations of SEMs. We suggest that the general nature of the model is capable of handling a variety of problems in the quantification of behavior, where the researcher has sufficient knowledge to formulate hypotheses.