Assessment of Path Model Fit: Evidence of Effectiveness and Recommendations for use of the RMSEA-P

Abstract

We review the development of path model fit measures for latent variable models and highlight how they are different from global fit measures. Next, we consider findings from two published simulation articles that reach different conclusions about the effectiveness of one path model fit measure (RMSEA-P). We then report the results of a new simulation study aimed at resolving the questions of whether and how the RMSEA-P should be used by organizational researchers. These results show that the RMSEA-P and its confidence interval is very effective with multiple indicator models at identifying misspecifications across large and small sample sizes and is effective at identifying true models at moderate to large sample sizes. We conclude with recommendations for how the RMSEA-P can be incorporated along with other information into model evaluation.