(Version 0.1.12 updated on 2024-11-02, release history)
This package is an assortment of time-saving helper functions for doing structural equation modeling (SEM), mainly by lavaan::lavaan() and its wrappers, such as lavaan::sem() and lavaan::cfa(). This package is not for implementing advanced statistical procedures. This should be the job of excellent packages such as semTools. These helper functions are for tasks that come in handy (at least to me) when doing SEM. They are usually used during the data analysis phase, not for publishing or presenting results.
Many of the tasks can be done by base R code or by dplyr functions. However, these functions may help users who are not familiar with R programming or use R only occasionally to do these tasks without writing their own code, or for people like me who know how to do this using base R but do not want to write the code every time.
I intentionally use base R if possible because I want to keep semhelpinghands a light weight package, depending on as few other packages as possible, so that I do not need to worry about deprecated functions or updates in other packages that break things, defeating the “time saving” purpose of this package.
Installation
The latest version at CRAN can be installed by install.packages():
install.packages("semhelpinghands")The latest developmental version at GitHub can be installed by remotes::install_github():
remotes::install_github("sfcheung/semhelpinghands")Motive
One major motive behind all these functions is writing something for my own work with others. So, each function should be at least useful to me myself and I myself will use them. Nevertheless, maybe there are others who, like me, just want some simple functions for some simple tasks. I also like using packages to pack functions I used myself in my work, so I do not have to source files again and again. Therefore, I packaged them into semhelpinghands also for myself. I hope this package will also be useful for some others.
I will only devote a limited amount of time on this package. The package and its functions are means for me to do research. They are not the goals themselves.
Acknowledgement
I would like to thank Prof. Rosseel and Prof. Jorgensen for developing lavaan and semTools. Their advice in the lavaan Google Group and GitHub pages (for lavaan and semTools) on various issues about lavaan helped me in writing some of the functions here, before they were packed into semhelpinghands. If there are people who inspired some of the functions but I forgot to acknowledge, please let me know.
Suggestions and Bugs
This package is still under development. There will be bugs, and there are limitations. Comments and suggestions are welcomed. Feel free to add an issue at GitHub. Although I may not be able to address all of them because this package is intended to be a collection of simple functions for simple tasks, and they are designed to be easy to maintain, I will try to do what I can do.