Evaluating Equivalence Testing Methods for Measurement Invariance
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Measurement Invariance (MI) is often concluded from a nonsignificant chi-square difference test. Researchers have also proposed using change in goodness of fit indices (∆GOFs) instead. Both of these commonly used methods for testing MI have important limitations. To combat these issues, Yuan and Chan (2016) proposed using an equivalence test (EQ) to replace the chi-square difference test commonly used to test MI. Due to their concerns with the EQ’s power, Yuan and Chan also created an adjusted version (EQ-A), but provide little evaluation of either procedure. The current study evaluated the Type I error and power of both the EQ and EQ-A, and compared their performance to that of the traditional chi-square difference test and ∆GOFs. The EQ for nested model comparisons was the only procedure that always maintained empirical error rates below the nominal alpha level. Results also highlight that the EQ requires larger sample sizes than traditional difference-based approaches or using equivalence bounds based on larger than conventional RMSEA values (e.g., > .05) to ensure adequate power rates. We do not recommend Yuan and Chan’s proposed adjustment (EQ-A) over the EQ.
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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 | 0.226 | 0.688 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.003 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.004 | 0.007 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.007 | 0.009 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.003 | 0.009 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.006 | 0.010 |
| Open science | 0.005 | 0.008 |
| Research integrity | 0.003 | 0.008 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.016 | 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; the direct Gemma label and the distilled Codex classifier agree on what is shown here.
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".