RMSR as an extraction criterion PreviousNext
Mplus Discussion > Exploratory Factor Analysis >
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 Florian Fiedler posted on Monday, November 28, 2005 - 4:41 am
Dear MPlus-team,

would you say, it's possible to use the RMSR fit index to make a decision on how many factors one should include in a model?

I'm conducting an EFA (estim. ULS) and according to Eigenvalue criteria I should assume 2 factors but the RMSR is much (seems to be significant) better when assuming 3 factors. So I'm thinking about comparing the fit indices with something like a X˛ difference test - of course without X˛s but perhaps based on RMSR. Would you say that's a feasible way?

Thanks a lot for your support and advice.
 Linda K. Muthen posted on Monday, November 28, 2005 - 4:45 pm
I'm not sure if your indicators are continuous or categorical but if you use ML or WLSMV, you will obtain chi-square and RMSEA in addition to RMSR.
 Florian Fiedler posted on Tuesday, November 29, 2005 - 12:47 am
Dear Linda,

that sounds good to me. I'm (still) following Grilli and Rampichini (2004).

Step 2 would be an EFA on the polychoric correlation matrix. -> WLSMV instead of ULS?

Step 3 requires seperate analysis of the between and pooled-within matrices. My indicators are actually ordinal, but the seperated matrices are only available when I treat them as being continuous ... So I've to conduct the EFA on the two matrices based on continuous data. -> ML instead of ULS?

Can I use the obtained RMSEA directly or would you recommend doing two CFAs with DIFFTEST?
 Linda K. Muthen posted on Tuesday, November 29, 2005 - 6:55 am
Yes.

Yes.

If your outcomes do not have strong floor or ceiling effects, it you have 5 categories you may want to treat them as continuous at least for these preliminary studies.

I'm not clear on your last question.
 Florian Fiedler posted on Tuesday, November 29, 2005 - 8:48 am
To make a decision in favour of a certain number of factors I want take the fit into account as well as an Eigenvalue criterion. So I'd have to compare two factor solutions. The EFA outputs provides fit indices as well so I thought about comparing them. I just talked to my mentor and we decided to model two CFAs according to the EFA outcome and comparing the CFA fit indices afterwards.

So the question is answered in a way. I'll get fit indices for the CFA models and only take those from the EFA with a one factor-solution.

Thank you very much - for further comments on our model selection strategy, too.
 CMP posted on Friday, March 20, 2015 - 12:37 am
Hello,

I found this info in the handout for Topic 1 of the online short course:

"RMSR – average residuals for the correlation matrix –recommend to be less than .05"

is the RMSR the same as the SRMR which is usually provided with the usual fit information? If not, how do we get the RMSR? I don't see it in my EFA output.


Thank you for your response.
 Linda K. Muthen posted on Friday, March 20, 2015 - 8:26 am
Yes, these are the same.
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