Maximum likelihood estimation of a social relations structural equation model
- PDF / 393,955 Bytes
- 20 Pages / 547.087 x 737.008 pts Page_size
- 69 Downloads / 246 Views
MAXIMUM LIKELIHOOD ESTIMATION OF A SOCIAL RELATIONS STRUCTURAL EQUATION MODEL
Steffen Nestler UNIVERSITY OF MÜNSTER
Oliver Lüdtke and Alexander Robitzsch LEIBNIZ INSTITUTE FOR SCIENCE AND MATHEMATICS EDUCATION CENTRE FOR INTERNATIONAL STUDENT ASSESSMENT
The social relations model (SRM) is widely used in psychology to investigate the components that underlie interpersonal perceptions, behaviors, and judgments. SRM researchers are often interested in investigating the multivariate relations between SRM effects. However, at present, it is not possible to investigate such relations without relying on a two-step approach that depends on potentially unreliable estimates of the true SRM effects. Here, we introduce a way to combine the SRM with the structural equation modeling (SEM) framework and show how the parameters of our combination can be estimated with a maximum likelihood (ML) approach. We illustrate the model with an example from personality psychology. We also investigate the statistical properties of the model in a small simulation study showing that our approach performs well in most simulation conditions. An R package (called srm) is available implementing the proposed methods. Key words: social relations model, structural equation modeling, maximum likelihood estimation.
The social relations model (SRM) is a conceptual and mathematical approach that can be applied to disentangle the components of interpersonal judgments and behaviors. It is used across different psychological disciplines (see Kenny et al. 2006), including personality and social psychology, educational psychology, clinical psychology, and organizational psychology (see the SRM bibliography available at http://davidakenny.net/doc/srmbiblio.pdf). For example, social and personality psychologists use the SRM to better understand the liking between unacquainted individuals (e.g., Küfner et al. 2012; Leckelt et al. 2015; Salazar-Kämpf et al. 2018). Educational psychologists use the model to examine students’ performance in learning groups and to determine which students profit the most from such groups (e.g., Horn et al. 1998). Finally, the SRM is used in clinical psychology to better understand the perceptions that occur during group psychotherapy (e.g., Christensen and Feeney 2016). Typically, the SRM is applied to a single round-robin variable. However, it is common practice to measure not just one but several round-robin variables that pertain to a certain construct. In the social psychology example, researchers may have assessed liking by using three round-robin variables: ’I like this person,’ ’I would like to get to know this person,’ and ’I would like to become friends with this person’ (see Salazar-Kämpf et al. 2018). Researchers might also have assessed multiple constructs with multiple round-robin variables. In our example, not only might researchers have measured liking with different liking indicators but perhaps also extraversion perceptions with different round-robin indicators. Although the univariate social relations model has
Data Loading...
