--- title: "Regsem Package" author: "Ross Jacobucci" date: "`r Sys.Date()`" output: rmarkdown::html_vignette vignette: > %\VignetteEngine{knitr::knitr} %\VignetteIndexEntry{Overview} %\usepackage[UTF-8]{inputenc} --- ### Simulate Data To test out the regsem package, we will first simulate data ```{r} library(lavaan);library(regsem) sim.mod <- " f1 =~ 1*y1 + 1*y2 + 1*y3+ 1*y4 + 1*y5 f1 ~ 0*x1 + 0*x2 + 0*x3 + 0*x4 + 0*x5 + 0.2*x6 + 0.5*x7 + 0.8*x8 f1~~1*f1" dat.sim = simulateData(sim.mod,sample.nobs=100,seed=12) ``` ### Run the Model with Lavaan And then run the model with lavaan so we can better see the structure. ```{r} run.mod <- " f1 =~ NA*y1 + y2 + y3+ y4 + y5 f1 ~ c1*x1 + c2*x2 + c3*x3 + c4*x4 + c5*x5 + c6*x6 + c7*x7 + c8*x8 f1~~1*f1 " lav.out <- sem(run.mod,dat.sim,fixed.x=FALSE) #summary(lav.out) parameterestimates(lav.out)[6:13,] # just look at regressions ``` ### Plot the Model ```{r,message=FALSE,warning=FALSE,fig.width=5,fig.height=5} semPlot::semPaths(lav.out) ``` One of the difficult pieces in using the cv_regsem function is that the penalty has to be calibrated for each particular problem. In running this code, I first tested the default, but this was too small given that there were some parameters > 0.4. After plotting this initial run, I saw that some parameters weren't penalized enough, therefore, I increased the penalty jump to 0.05 and with 30 different values this tested a model (at a high penalty) that had all estimates as zero. In some cases it isn't necessary to test a sequence of penalties that would set "large" parameters to zero, as either the model could fail to converge then, or there is not uncertainty about those parameters inclusion. ```{r,results='hide'} reg.out <- cv_regsem(lav.out,n.lambda=30,type="lasso",jump=0.04, pars_pen=c("c1","c2","c3","c4","c5","c6","c7","c8")) ``` In specifying this model, we use the parameter labels to tell *cv_regsem* which of the parameters to penalize. Equivalently, we could have used the *extractMatrices* function to identify which parameters to penalize. ```{r,eval=FALSE} # not run extractMatrices(lav.out)["A"] ``` Additionally, we can specify which parameters are penalized by type: "regressions", "loadings", or both c("regressions","loadings"). Note though that this penalizes *all* parameters of this type. If you desire to penalize a subset of parameters, use either the parameter name or number format for pars_pen. Next, we can get a summary of the models tested. ```{r} summary(reg.out) ``` ## Plot the parameter trajectories ```{r,fig.width=5,fig.height=5} plot(reg.out) ``` Here we can see that we used a large enough penalty to set all parameter estimates to zero. However, the best fitting model came early on, when only a couple parameters were zero. regsem defaults to using the BIC to choose a final model. This shows up in the *final_pars* object as well as the lines in the plot. This can be changed with the *metric* argument. Understand better what went on with the fit ```{r} head(reg.out$fits,10) ``` One thing to check is the "conv" column. This refers to convergence, with 0 meaning the model converged. And see what the best fitting parameter estimates are. ```{r} reg.out$final_pars[1:13] # don't show variances/covariances ``` In this final model, we set the regression paths for x2,x3, x4, and x5 to zero. We make a mistake for x1, but we also correctly identify x6, x7, and x8 as true paths .Maximum likelihood estimation with lavaan had p-values > 0.05 for the parameters simulated as zero, but also did not identify the true path of 0.2 as significant (< 0.05).