Error message PreviousNext
Mplus Discussion > Confirmatory Factor Analysis >
Message/Author
 Manon Burgat posted on Wednesday, August 21, 2013 - 10:34 pm
Hi there,

I am trying to run a CFA in Mplus 6.12, but unfortunately keep recieving the following error message:

"One or more variables have a variance of zero. Check your data and format statement."

I do not know why this is. I do not have any missing variables, and there are no blanks in my data set. Can you please assist me with this issue?

Thanks in advance,
Manon
 Manon Burgat posted on Wednesday, August 21, 2013 - 10:35 pm
Also, for reference here is my input:

TITLE: please
DATA:
FILE IS "F:\DATA\Path Analysis\please.csv";
VARIABLE:
NAMES ARE DERS1 DERS2 DERS3 DERS4 DERS5 DERS6 DERS7 DERS8 DERS9
DERS10 DERS11 DERS12 DERS13 DERS14 DERS15 DERS16 DERS17 DERS18 DERS19
DERS20 DERS21 DERS22 DERS23 DERS24 DERS25 DERS26 DERS27 DERS28 DERS29
DERS30 DERS31 DERS32 DERS33 DERS34 DERS35 DERS36 NSSI;
USEVARIABLES ARE DERS1 DERS2 DERS3 DERS4 DERS5 DERS6 DERS7 DERS8
DERS9 DERS10 DERS11 DERS12 DERS13 DERS14 DERS15 DERS16 DERS17 DERS18
DERS19 DERS20 DERS21 DERS22 DERS23 DERS24 DERS25 DERS26 DERS27 DERS28
DERS29 DERS30 DERS31 DERS32 DERS33 DERS34 DERS35 DERS36;
ANALYSIS:
TYPE IS GENERAL;
ESTIMATOR IS ML;
ITERATIONS = 1000;
CONVERGENCE = 0.00005;
MODEL:
NONACC BY DERS25 DERS21 DERS12 DERS11 DERS29 DERS23;
GOALS BY DERS26 DERS18 DERS13 DERS33 DERS20;
IMPULSE BY DERS32 DERS27 DERS14 DERS19 DERS3 DERS24;
AWARE BY DERS6 DERS2 DERS10 DERS17 DERS8 DERS34;
STRAT BY DERS16 DERS15 DERS31 DERS35 DERS28 DERS22 DERS36 DERS30;
CLARITY BY DERS5 DERS4 DERS9 DERS7 DERS1;
OUTPUT:
SAMPSTAT MODINDICES RESIDUAL STANDARDIZED CINTERVAL FSCOEFFICIENT
FSDETERMINACY TECH1 TECH2 TECH3 TECH4 TECH5;
 Linda K. Muthen posted on Thursday, August 22, 2013 - 6:37 am
Please send your input, data, output, and license number to support@statmodel.com.

Please note that posts to Mplus Discussion should be limited to one window.
 Charity S. Watkins posted on Thursday, September 06, 2018 - 7:04 pm
Hello Dr. Muthen,

After cleaning my dataset in Stata and saving the dta file on my computer, I've tried several times in several different ways to open the file in Mplus; however, I keep getting the following message:

*** ERROR
The number of observations is 0. Check your data and format statement.
Data file: \Client\H$\Dropbox\ESSPdataSept6.dta
*** ERROR
Invalid symbol in data file:
"<stata_dta><header><release>118<" at record #: 1, field #: 1

I've tried editing the file name, deleting special characters within the text using Microsoft Word, and saving the file in different formats. I am worried that the problem is a result of using my university's virtual lab to conduct my analysis because any file saved on my computer via Virtual Lab includes the '$' symbol in the path. Is this the issue or am I missing something else? Here is the syntax I used to open my data file:

DATA: FILE is \Client\H$\Dropbox\ESSPdataSept6.dta;

Also, I should note that I've tried opening the dataset in Excel but I received a message that it wasn't in a readable format. I'm using a Mac. Thank you so much for your time.
 Linda K. Muthen posted on Friday, September 07, 2018 - 1:37 pm
Please send the output, data set, and your license number to support@statmodel.com.
Back to top
Add Your Message Here
Post:
Username: Posting Information:
This is a private posting area. Only registered users and moderators may post messages here.
Password:
Options: Enable HTML code in message
Automatically activate URLs in message
Action: