Centre for Positive Psychology and Education

As methodology becomes exponentially more advanced, applied researchers are becoming increasingly separated from the fundamental foundations of the statistical tools that they use on a daily basis. My talk Introduces the language of matrix manipulation and algebra, and aims to provide a look behind popular latent variable modelling tools to see what they are doing to your data when you click “run”. The talk will be at a relatively introductory level aiming to translate some of the complex mathematical equations of SEM into normal speak. It will cover how model specification is translated into an expected covariance matrix, how maximum likelihood estimation works in SEM, and how standard errors and fit values are calculated. At a more advanced level the talk will cover the issues of the impact of user specified start values and false solutions, contrasting CFA based and Cronbach alpha estimates of unidimensionality, and empirical identification.

Dr Philip Parker is currently a research fellow at the Centre for Positive Psychology and Education (CPPE). Philip’s research uses large longitudinal databases from Australia, US, UK, Germany and Finland where he focuses on career pathways, personality, and well-being issues related to youths’ transition from school to work or further education. Philip studied psychology at the SELF research centre at the University of Western Sydney where he received a first class honours degree and the Australian Psychological Society Science Prize for his thesis. He then completed his PhD at the University of Sydney on the role of motivational constructs and processes in the development of teacher burnout and subjective well-being. Philip has published in a number of international journals including the Developmental Psychology, Journal of Personality, Learning and Individual Differences, Journal of Health, Education, and Behaviour and Teaching and Teacher Education. He also published a number of book chapters and peer-reviewed papers in international conferences proceedings and monographs. Philip was previously a Jacob's foundation funded international post-doctoral research fellow in the PATHWAYS to Adulthood program based at the Max Planck Institute of Human Development and the Centre for Educational Science and Psychology, University of Tübingen, Germany.

• SEM: Behind the Curtin - Presentation (opens in a new window)