AceLavaanGroup {NlsyLinks}

A simple multiple-group ACE model with the lavaan package.

Description

This function uses the lavaan package to estimate a univariate ACE model, using multiple groups. Each group has a unique value of R (i.e., the Relatedness coefficient).

Usage

AceLavaanGroup(
  dsClean,
  estimateA = TRUE,
  estimateC = TRUE,
  printOutput = FALSE
)

Arguments

dsClean

The base::data.frame containing complete cases for the R groups to be included in the estimation.

estimateA

Should the A variance component be estimated? A^2 represents the proportion of variability due to a shared genetic influence.

estimateC

Should the C variance component be estimated? C^2 represents the proportion of variability due to a shared environmental influence.

printOutput

Indicates if the estimated parameters and fit statistics are printed to the console.

Details

The variance component for E is always estimated, while the A and C estimates can be fixed to zero (when estimateA and/or estimateC are set to FALSE).

Value

An AceEstimate object.

Note

Currently, the variables in dsClean must be named O1, O2 and R; the letter 'O' stands for Outcome. This may not be as restrictive as it initially seems, because dsClean is intended to be produced by CleanSemAceDataset(). If this is too restrictive for your uses, we'd like to here about it (please email wibeasley at hotmail period com).

Author(s)

Will Beasley

References

The lavaan package is developed by Yves Rosseel at Ghent University. Three good starting points are the package website (http://lavaan.ugent.be/), the package documentation (https://cran.r-project.org/package=lavaan) and the JSS paper.

Rosseel, Yves (2012), lavaan: An R Package for Structural Equation Modeling. Journal of Statistical Software, 48, (2), 1-36.

See Also

CleanSemAceDataset(). Further ACE model details are discussed in our package's vignettes.

Examples

library(NlsyLinks) # Load the package into the current R session.
dsLinks <- Links79PairExpanded # Start with the built-in data.frame in NlsyLinks
dsLinks <- dsLinks[dsLinks$RelationshipPath == "Gen2Siblings", ] # Use only Gen2 Siblings (NLSY79-C)

oName_S1 <- "MathStandardized_S1" # Stands for Outcome1
oName_S2 <- "MathStandardized_S2" # Stands for Outcome2

dsGroupSummary <- RGroupSummary(dsLinks, oName_S1, oName_S2)
dsClean <- CleanSemAceDataset(dsDirty = dsLinks, dsGroupSummary, oName_S1, oName_S2)

ace <- AceLavaanGroup(dsClean)
ace

# Should produce:
# [1] "Results of ACE estimation: [show]"
#     ASquared     CSquared     ESquared    CaseCount
#    0.6681874    0.1181227    0.2136900 8390.0000000

library(lavaan) # Load the package to access methods of the lavaan class.
GetDetails(ace)

# Exmaine fit stats like Chi-Squared, RMSEA, CFI, etc.
fitMeasures(GetDetails(ace)) # The function 'fitMeasures' is defined in the lavaan package.

# Examine low-level details like each group's individual parameter estimates and standard errors.
summary(GetDetails(ace))

# Extract low-level details. This may be useful when programming simulations.
inspect(GetDetails(ace), what = "converged") # The lavaan package defines 'inspect'.
inspect(GetDetails(ace), what = "coef")