Compare original model to model with deleted loadings
Once you have a revised version with that weak loading deleted, it's time to compare it to the original theory-based model. If you were the developer of this measure, you would probably hope that the original version would fit better, since you would have carefully constructed items to measure your theoretical constructs. In practice, though, it can be tricky to know whether or not items are actually performing well, and sometimes you might want to drop items to create a stronger measure. For this exercise, we'll compare the CFIs and RMSEAs.
This exercise is part of the course
Factor Analysis in R
Exercise instructions
- Check out the absolute fit indices for each model to see which fits better.
- Investigate the RMSEAs for each model to see which fits better.
Hands-on interactive exercise
Have a go at this exercise by completing this sample code.
# Compare the comparative fit indices - higher is better!
summary(theory_CFA)$___
summary(theory_CFA_del)$___
# Compare the RMSEA values - lower is better!
summary(___)$RMSEA
summary(___)$RMSEA