Skip to content

Home

Jump to bottom Edit New page
Daniel Oberski edited this page Aug 8, 2013 · 38 revisions

JruleMplus is a program for the detection of misspecifications in structural equation models (SEM).

The program uses the Expected Parameter Change (EPC) in combination with the Modification Index (MI) and the power of the MI test for the detection of misspecifications. The novelty in this approach is in its use of a new result from a paper by Saris, Satorra and Van der Veld. Namely, the Power of the score test can be estimated using only the MI and EPC values, given some judgement rules that can be set in the program.

You can now download the Windows installer! Just open or double click the installer and follow the steps to install the program. Then open the program (for example from the installer or from the Start menu), and open an Mplus output file by clicking on the button at the top. Two test files are provided in the directory “tests” in the folder where JruleMplus was installed.

This program was made by Daniel Oberski. The name Jrule and the idea for the program come from William van der Veld.

Installation

  • If you have an old version of JruleMplus installed on your system, it is a good idea to uninstall it first via Start>Control Panel>Add/Remove Programs, or opening the uninstaller unins000.exe in the C:\Program Files\JruleMplus directory.
  • Download and open the JruleMplus installer.
  • If you have not already done so, download and install the Microsoft Visual C++ 2008 Redistributable Package . This is necessary if you are using Windows Vista or Windows 7. If you are using Windows XP it may not be necessary. In the future the necessity for this will be removed.

Usage

  • After you have opened the program, no Mplus output file will be open; click on the file button at the top of the screen to open an Mplus output file.
  • Make sure this output file contains modification indices. You can ask Mplus to print modification indices by providing “MODINDICES” on the OUTPUT line of your input file
  • The program will load the file, displaying the parameters.
  • Make subselections of parameters by typing part of the parameter name into the filters (you can use regular expressions), change the decision rules by clicking the rules tab, view your parameters in a plot by clicking on the plot tab… etc.!

Known issues

Here are some problems, bugs, and imperfections I know about and am planning to fix as soon as possible. If you encounter more of these, please let me know!

  • The binary distribution is rather large at the moment (11MB to download and 44MB on disk). The size has already been greatly reduced (and speed increased) by using a specially written c++ library for the power calculations instead of the good but bloated scipy python module. But more can be accomplished.
  • It is often necessary to install the Microsoft Visual C++ 2008 Redistributable Package mentioned above separately. This is not ideal and in the future I will remove this necessity. On the positive side the program also works with Vista thanks to this.
Add a custom footer
Add a custom sidebar
Clone this wiki locally