The phantom model approach for estimating, testing, and comparing specific effects within structural equation models (SEMs) is presented. The rationale underlying this novel method consists in representing the specific effect to be assessed as a total effect within a separate latent variable model, the phantom model that is added to the main…

Relative weight analysis is a procedure for estimating the relative importance of correlated predictors in a regression equation. Because the sampling distribution of relative weights is unknown, researchers using relative weight analysis are unable to make judgments regarding the statistical significance of the relative weights. J. W. Johnson…