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Determine the Order of Indicators Automatically

Source: R/auto_indicator_order.R
auto_indicator_order.Rd

Determine the order of indicators and match indicators and factors based on a plot from a 'qgraph' object.

Usage

auto_indicator_order(semPaths_plot, add_isolated_manifest = FALSE)

Arguments

semPaths_plot

A qgraph::qgraph object generated by semPlot::semPaths(), or a similar qgraph::qgraph object modified by other semptools functions.

add_isolated_manifest

Logical. Whether observed variables that are not indicators will be included in the output as "factors", each with one indicator (the observed variable).

Value

A named character vector. The values are the indicators identified. The names are the latent factors the indicators loaded on.

Details

It inspects a qgraph::qgraph object and find variables that are the indicators of latent factors.

The output can be used in the argument indicator_order of set_cfa_layout() and set_sem_layout(). It can also be modified, such as reordered, as necessary.

If the generated order is used, there is no need to call this function manually because set_cfa_layout() and set_sem_layout() will automatically call this function, if indicator_order is not set.

It assumes that observed variables are represented by squares (shape set to "square") and latent variables represented by circles or ovals (shape set to "circle").

An observed variable is considered as an indicator if there is an arrow pointing to it from a latent variable.

If an indicator loaded on more than one latent variable, it will only be matched to one of them, determined by the order of appearance in the internal storage.

It uses node names, not node labels, in generating the output.

See also

set_sem_layout() and set_cfa_layout().

Examples


library(lavaan)
library(semPlot)

mod <-
  'f1 =~ x01 + x02 + x03 + x06
   f2 =~ x04 + x05 + x06 + x07
   f3 =~ x08 + x09 + x10 + x03
   f4 =~ x11 + x12 + x13 + x14
  '
fit <- lavaan::cfa(mod, cfa_example)
p <- semPaths(fit,
              whatLabels = "est",
              sizeMan = 3.25,
              node.width = 1,
              edge.label.cex = .75,
              mar = c(10, 5, 10, 5),
              DoNotPlot = TRUE)
indicator_order <- auto_indicator_order(p)
indicator_order
#>    f1    f1    f1    f1    f2    f2    f2    f3    f3    f3    f4    f4    f4 
#> "x01" "x02" "x03" "x06" "x04" "x05" "x07" "x08" "x09" "x10" "x11" "x12" "x13" 
#>    f4 
#> "x14" 
p2 <- set_cfa_layout(p,
                     indicator_order = indicator_order)
plot(p2)

# set_cfa_layout() will call auto_indicator_order()
# automatically if indicator_order is not set.
p3 <- set_cfa_layout(p)
plot(p3)