Review of Gana & Broc’s Structural Equation Modeling with lavaan

Abstract

This book is written to be a practical guide to both structural equation modeling (SEM) and to using the R package lavaan (Rosseel 2012) to apply SEM. As one can read in Gana and Broc’s (2019) introduction, the book is meant to be “a didactic book presenting the basics of a technique for beginners who wish to gradually learn structural equation modeling and make use of its flexibility, opportunities, and upgrades and extenxions [sic]” (p. xi). The authors stress that they have put themselves in the shoes of the user with a limited statistical background, who should “easily find in it both a technical introduction and a practical introduction, oriented towards the use of SEM” (p. xii). Open-source software was chosen deliberately on Gana’s part, as the preface mentions his experience “teaching SEM in African universities where it was impossible to have SEM commercial software” (p. ix).