When is a confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) model identified in SEM?
• Why is it that this and other write-ups of SEM give little emphasis to the concept of significance testing? While many of the measures used in SEM can be assessed for significance, significance testing is less important in SEM than in other multivariate techniques. In other techniques, significance testing is usually conducted to establish that we can be confident that a finding is different from the nul hypothesis, or, more broadly, that an effect can be viewed as “real.” In SEM the purpose is usually to determine if one model conforms to the data better than an alternative model. It is acknowledged that establishing this does not establish “reality” as there is always the possibility that an unexamined model may conform to the data even better. More broadly, in SEM the focus is on the strength of relationship of the model with the data, which is a question of association, not significance. Other reasons why significance is of less importance in SEM is the focus on testing overall m
