MplusAutomation: An R Package for Facilitating Large-Scale Latent Variable Analyses in Mplus

Abstract

MplusAutomation is a package for R that facilitates complex latent variable analyses in Mplus involving comparisons among many models and parameters. More specifically, MplusAutomation provides tools to accomplish 3 objectives: to create and manage Mplus syntax for groups of related models; to automate the estimation of many models; and to extract, aggregate, and compare fit statistics, parameter estimates, and ancillary model outputs. We provide an introduction to the package using applied examples including a large-scale simulation study. By reducing the effort required for large-scale studies, a broad goal of MplusAutomation is to support methodological developments in structural equation modeling using Mplus.

Keywords:

• latent variable analysis
• Monte Carlo study
• Mplus
• R

Notes

¹ We note, however, that recent versions of Mplus store some estimates in a hierarchical data format (HDF) file amenable to direct importation by R or other software.

² Mplus syntax and output are available in the MplusAutomation repository at https://github.com/michaelhallquist/MplusAutomation/tree/master/examples/lca_cfa_example.

³ Technically this is a latent profile model because the indicators are continuous, but we use the term LCA to encompass latent class models with both categorical and continuous variables.

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by grants from the National Institute of Mental Health to Michael N. Hallquist (F32 MH090629, K01 MH097091).