An Open-source WYSIWYG Web Application for Drawing Path Diagrams of Structural Equation Models

Abstract

Structural equation modeling (SEM) is widely used in behavioral, social, and education research. Drawing publication-ready path diagrams for SEM is not a pleasant task with the existing software. The article introduces an open-source web-based graphical application, semdiag, for drawing WYSIWYG SEM path diagrams interactively. The application is an on-going project developed by the authors using JavaScript, and it can be used in major web browsers, both online and offline. Several examples are provided to demonstrate how to use the application.

Keywords:

• JavaScript
• structural equation modeling
• path diagram
• graphical interface

Acknowledgments

We thank Meghan Cain, Han Du, Ge Jiang, Haiyan Liu, Agung Santoso and Miao Yang for their suggestions to improve the software.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Department of Education under Grants R305D140037 and R305D210023.