An alternative to post hoc model modification in confirmatory factor analysis: The Bayesian lasso.
Bibliographic record
Abstract
As a commonly used tool for operationalizing measurement models, confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) requires strong assumptions that can lead to a poor fit of the model to real data. The post hoc modification model approach attempts to improve CFA fit through the use of modification indexes for identifying significant correlated residual error terms. We analyzed a 28-item emotion measure collected for n = 175 participants. The post hoc modification approach indicated that 90 item-pair errors were significantly correlated, which demonstrated the challenge in using a modification index, as the error terms must be individually modified as a sequence. Additionally, the post hoc modification approach cannot guarantee a positive definite covariance matrix for the error terms. We propose a method that enables the entire inverse residual covariance matrix to be modeled as a sparse positive definite matrix that contains only a few off-diagonal elements bounded away from zero. This method circumvents the problem of having to handle correlated residual terms sequentially. By assigning a Lasso prior to the inverse covariance matrix, this Bayesian method achieves model parsimony as well as an identifiable model. Both simulated and real data sets were analyzed to evaluate the validity, robustness, and practical usefulness of the proposed procedure. (PsycINFO Database Record
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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 | 0.059 | 0.182 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.003 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.003 | 0.002 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.003 | 0.004 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.002 | 0.003 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.003 | 0.003 |
| Open science | 0.003 | 0.004 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.006 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.005 | 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".