The AIC model selection method applied to path analytic models compared using a d‐separation test
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Classical path analysis is a statistical technique used to test causal hypotheses involving multiple variables without latent variables, assuming linearity, multivariate normality, and a sufficient sample size. The d-separation (d-sep) test is a generalization of path analysis that relaxes these assumptions. Although model selection using Akaike's information criterion (AIC) is well established for classical path analysis, this model selection technique has not yet been developed for d-sep tests. In this paper, I explain how to use the AIC statistic for d-sep tests, give a worked example, and include instructions (supplemental material) to implement the analysis in the R computing language.
Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.
How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.037 | 0.216 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.004 | 0.005 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.007 | 0.009 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.004 | 0.004 |
| Open science | 0.003 | 0.004 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.006 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.019 | 0.002 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".