lavaan.survey: An R Package for Complex Survey Analysis of Structural Equation Models

Abstract

This paper introduces the R package lavaan.survey, a user-friendly interface to design-based complex survey analysis of structural equation models (SEMs). By leveraging existing code in the lavaan and survey packages, the lavaan.survey package allows for SEM analyses of stratified, clustered, and weighted data, as well as multiply imputed complex survey data. lavaan.survey provides several features such as SEMs with replicate weights, a variety of resampling techniques for complex samples, and finite population corrections, features that should prove useful for SEM practitioners faced with the common situation of a sample that is not iid.