We had Prof. Dr. Paolo Ghisletta, from the University of Geneva, visit us this week and give us a great introduction to structural equation modelling (abstract below) as well as a workshop to the doctoral students in the Social, Economic, and Decision Psychology Ph.D. Program.

An introduction to structural equation modeling

Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) is a general set of techniques that proposes a formal statistical statement about the relations among a chosen set of variables. As such, SEM subsumes the General Linear Model (e.g., linear regression, t-test, analysis of variance). However, one of the major advantages of SEM consists in allowing for testing complicated theories that include latent (unmeasured) variables. Thanks to modern software development, the use of SEM has increased exponentially in the last two decades, also in the social sciences and in psychology. In this introductory lecture we will discuss of the main principles underlying SEM, its major advantages but also drawbacks, and how to use SEM in practice. Several examples will be illustrated.