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 Daniel Lee posted on Saturday, May 19, 2012 - 10:24 pm
Hello! I'm trying to conduct a CFA on a 84-item measure. In the syntax, each item represents a variable. Unfortunately, with so many items, I am easily surpassing the 90 character limit. Do you have advice for conducting a CFA on an 84-item measure on MPlus? Thank you! -Daniel Lee
 Linda K. Muthen posted on Sunday, May 20, 2012 - 6:06 am
You need to continue the NAMES statement on additional lines.
 Daniel Lee posted on Sunday, May 20, 2012 - 1:27 pm
Hi Dr. Muthen,
Thank you so much!
Daniel
 Katja Schlegel posted on Monday, July 08, 2013 - 9:45 am
Hello,

I am trying to adapt the code for item and scale reliability with binary items from Raykov et al. (2010) to my test, which however has 83 items. The resulting code apparently is too long, as I get the message "Statement exceeds line limit. Break your statement into several parts."
What is the line limit in Mplus 7 and is there a way to solve this problem?

Thank you & best regards,
Katja
 Linda K. Muthen posted on Monday, July 08, 2013 - 10:18 am
The limit for input files is 90 characters. You can break the statement into several parts, for example,

NAMES are y1 y2 y3
y4 y5 y6
y7 y8 y9;
 Katja Schlegel posted on Monday, July 08, 2013 - 10:56 am
I am sorry if I was being unclear - the line limit, not the character limit, is exceeded.
My Input file has about 900 lines, because the calculation of the scale and item reliability requires about 10 calculation steps per item (and I have 83 items) according to the Mplus code provided in the Raykov article.

Is there maybe a way of saving the values resulting from some of the calculations (for example, one intermediate step is the calculation of item mean true scores) as variables in the dataset, and then continuing the next calculation step with a new Input file, using the saved variables? Like this I could split the code into shorter parts, if the whole code is too long.

Thanks again for your reply.
 Linda K. Muthen posted on Monday, July 08, 2013 - 12:08 pm
We impose no line limit. Please send the input file, data, and your license number to support@statmodel.com so we can see where the error is coming from.
 Tammy Tolar posted on Thursday, August 28, 2014 - 9:13 am
I am doing the same analyses (as Katja above) with 55 items and getting the same error message about exceeding the line limit. Based on reviewing her file, is there a generic answer to the problem? Thanks.
 Linda K. Muthen posted on Thursday, August 28, 2014 - 9:40 am
I don't remember what the issue was. Please send the input file, data, and your license number to support@statmodel.com so we can see where the error is coming from.
 Georgios Sideridis posted on Friday, August 12, 2016 - 8:55 am
Hi,
I too am getting the same message "Statement exceeds line limit. Break your statement into several parts." as my model constraint command has lots of variables following a CFA model. I don't exceed the character limit and you mentioned that there is no line limit in Mplus (I am using the latest version). Any idea as to what is causing this problem?
 Linda K. Muthen posted on Friday, August 12, 2016 - 10:49 am
Please send the output and your license number to support@statmodel.com.
 Margarita  posted on Monday, October 16, 2017 - 3:58 am
Dear Dr. Muthen,

I am also getting the above message when running the reliability of an 18-binary-item scale (as proposed by Raykov et al,2010). I tried breaking the true variance of sum score equation into smaller parts and even though I no longer get that message I now get


STARTING VALUES FOR THE DEPENDENT PARAMETERS COULD NOT BE COMPUTED FROM THE STARTING VALUES FOR THE INDEPENDENT PARAMETERS. CHANGE THE STARTING VALUES FOR THE INDEPENDENT PARAMETERS.

THE MODEL ESTIMATION DID NOT TERMINATE NORMALLY DUE TO AN ERROR IN THE COMPUTATION. CHANGE YOUR MODEL AND/OR STARTING VALUES.

I checked the syntax multiple times and appears to be correct. Do you have ideas as to why this is happening?

Thank you.
 Linda K. Muthen posted on Monday, October 16, 2017 - 6:58 am
Please send the output and your license number to support@statmodel.com.
 Jane Lee posted on Friday, July 20, 2018 - 6:43 pm
Dear Dr. Muthen,

I am running a CFA with 20 items, but I keep getting the error message: The length of the data field exceeds the 40-character limit for free-formatted
data. Error at record #: 4, field #: 20.

What does this error mean and what should I do to solve it? Thank you in advance.
 Linda K. Muthen posted on Saturday, July 21, 2018 - 6:30 am
It sounds like your data are in fixed format and you need a FORMAT statement. If that is not it, send your license, the output, and the data set to support@statmodel.com.
 Jim Hamilton posted on Monday, September 24, 2018 - 1:46 pm
Is there any way to ask for the warnings about variable name length to be omitted?
 Bengt O. Muthen posted on Monday, September 24, 2018 - 4:51 pm
No.
 Sophie Ward posted on Tuesday, March 05, 2019 - 6:08 am
Hi,
I too am getting the same message "Statement exceeds line limit. Break your statement into several parts." as my model constraint command has lots of variables.

For example:
NEW(LOW_SP MED_SP HIGH_SP
LOW_SE MED_SE HIGH_SE
LOW_IS MED_IS HIGH_IS
LOW_DM MED_DM HIGH_DM
LOW_SM MED_SM HIGH_SM
ILOSP_LOSE IMESP_LOSE.....

I am not exceeding the character limit for each line and you say there is not a line limit so I am not sure what to do. Thanks. Sophie
 Sophie Ward posted on Tuesday, March 05, 2019 - 6:48 am
Hi there, I believe I have sorted the issue above. However I am now having a issue with the loop plot. It says Only one LOOP statement is allowed in MODEL CONSTRAINTS.
I have 4 X variables though so not sure how to get around this. E.g. X1 X2 X3 X4
 Bengt O. Muthen posted on Tuesday, March 05, 2019 - 2:03 pm
Please send your output to Support along with your license number.
 Sophie Ward posted on Wednesday, March 06, 2019 - 2:40 am
Thanks, I have sent you an email.
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