[R] CFA in R/sem package

[Iuri Gavronski]

Hi,

I am not sure if R-help is the right forum for my question. If not,
please let me know.

I have to do some discriminant validity tests with some constructs. I
am using the method of doing a CFA constraining the correlation of a
pair of the constructs to 1 and comparing the chi-square of this
constrained model to the unconstrained model. If the chi-square
difference is not significant, then I cannot reject the null
hypothesis that the two constructs are equal.

Well, if you are going to test, say, 4 constructs (A, B, C, and D),
you will have to have 2*C(4,2) = 12 models to test, 5 constructs, 20
models, and so forth. A tedious and error prone process...

So far, I have been using AMOS for that shake, given that 1) my
university has the license, 2) my other colleagues use it, and 3) I
know it ;)

I would like to know if any of you use R, namely the sem package, for
that application and if you can share your thoughts/experiences on
using it. I don't thing I would have problems "porting" my models to
R/sem, but I would like to know if there is an optimized process of
doing that tests, without manually coding all the dozens of models.

Best,

Iuri.