How small can a sample size be for a structural equation model?

Détails

ID Serval
serval:BIB_745D6B5AB798
Type
Actes de conférence (partie): contribution originale à la littérature scientifique, publiée à l'occasion de conférences scientifiques, dans un ouvrage de compte-rendu (proceedings), ou dans l'édition spéciale d'un journal reconnu (conference proceedings).
Collection
Publications
Institution
Titre
How small can a sample size be for a structural equation model?
Titre de la conférence
Congress of the Swiss Psychological Society, Basel, Switzerland
Auteur⸱e⸱s
Bastardoz N., Antonakis J.
Statut éditorial
Publié
Date de publication
2013
Peer-reviewed
Oui
Pages
141
Langue
anglais
Résumé
There are several rules of thumb regarding the minimum sample size or ratio of sample size to estimated coefficients in structural equation models. for example, Bentler and Chou (1985) argue that the ratio of sample size to estimated parameters should be minimum 5:1. To examine under what conditions this rule-of-thumb holds, we ran Monte-Carlo simulations for a structural-equation model with three exogenous latent variables that predicted a dependent variable via an endogenous regressor. We varied (a) the number of observations (from 40 to 200 by increment of 20), (b), the number of latent variables indicators (from 2 to 6 in increment of 1), and (c) the correlations between independent variables, ranging from low to highly collinear (i.e., from .1 to .8 by increment of .1). Our results show that ml estimates are still consistent even in very small sample conditions; however, model convergence rates were very low in low sample size conditions. We found that the chi-square test of model fit tends to over-reject correctly specified models when the parameter to sample size ratio is very small. We also found that a correction to the chi-square proposed by Swain (1975) better approximates the chi-square distribution at small sample sizes and reduced rejection rates close to the type i error rate; that is, across all sample conditions, 5.01% of correctly specified models were rejected using the Swain-corrected statistic whereas rejection rates for the chi-square averaged 14.32%. at the smallest sample size to parameter ratio (i.e., n=40 with 6 indicators), the average rejection for the Swain-correct chi-square was 11.92%; however, it was 76.81% for the chi-square test. Finally, we examined the power of the Hausman (1978) test to detect endogenous regressors. We found that the test has a very low power at small sample sizes. Based on these results we make several recommendations for applied researchers.
Création de la notice
03/11/2013 10:37
Dernière modification de la notice
20/08/2019 15:32
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