SEM Essentials

The focus of this section of the website is to provide information that will help interested individuals develop, solve, and interpret structural equation models. This site does not attempt to replace the need for textbooks and other scholarly treatments of the subject as the emphasis here is on the "how to", which is the practical matter that is hard to present in textbooks. That said, for those not already familiar with SEM, I recommend some material be viewed as a preface to the various other tutorials on this site. One can click here to download the module "SEM Essentials".

References: Some references about the background behind SEM or about why one might want to use it include the following:

A useful reference on interpreting SEM results can be found (clickable link) at

Grace, J.B. and K.A. Bollen. 2005. Interpreting the results from multiple regression and structural equation models. Bull. Ecol. Soc. Amer. 86:283-295.

Some General References:

Grace, JB 2006. Structural Equation Modeling and Natural Systems. Cambridge University Press.

Shipley, B. 2000. Cause and Correlation in Biology. Cambridge University Press.

Kline (2005) Principles and Practice of Structural Equation Modeling. (2nd Edition) Guilford Press.

Hancock & Muller (2006) Structural Equation Modeling: A Second Course. Information Age Publishing, Greenwich, CT.

Bollen (1989) Structural Equations with Latent Variables. John Wiley and Sons.

Lee (2007) Structural Equation Modeling: A Bayesian Approach. John Wiley and Sons.