Principles and Practice of Structural Equation Modeling, Second Edition (Methodology In The Social Sciences)

Great book to use as a supplement to the LISREL 8 manuals. It's easy to read and provides references if you need to investigate a specific issue in more detail.

When Joreskog and his colleagues introduced LISREL into social science discourse, my dissertation director was despondent. An old fogy at 40!

If he's alive today, however, I'm sure he feels much better. He'd be 64 now, and chances are he's had a chance to read Rex Kline's Principles and Practice of Structural Equation Modeling. Coupled with new, much more user-friendly software such as AMOS and CALIS, Kline's SEM book is not only readable but almost easy, while at the same time being comprehensive in coverage.

I never thought I'd see a book that presents not only the order condition for identification, but the rank condition, as well, without using matrix algebra. But Kline pulls it off. This example exemplifies Kline's talent for making really complex statistical procedures eminently accessible.

If my dissertation director is still working, I'm sure he's no longer intimidated by SEM, and he's using it to estimate informative models. In large measure, I'd be willing to guess, his new-found analytical power is due to Rex Kline's excellent textbook. I've benefited enormously from reading it.

AMOS can seem so simple that it is confusing. Where are the obfuscating command lines that we used to love? If you know and loathed another program in the same ilk, you may have problems with the ease of the AMOS graphic interface and command language. If this is the case, then this book is for you.

I am a manager of a team of statisticians that work in Market Research. This book has helped my team of applied statisticians to understand the concepts involved in SEM as the book is very clear and makes few assumptions of the readers' knowledge. Mathematical formulas are kept to a minimum, with any that are shown fully described.

This is not to say the book is just an introductory book for beginners as it has many advanced insights and excellent examples that a more experienced modeller can learn from. It is one of the most read books in our library as the author makes the subject compelling to read and every time it is reread you learn more from it as it works on many levels.

It is an essential book to have on SEM from a conceptual and practical point of view. Though it is not a book for someone wanting to know the mathematics behind creating the models in depth.

This Book is Great for anyone doing analysis using SEM. It is a very good source of refference. Its clear and concise.