Software:Lavaan

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lavaan
Original author(s)Yves Rosseel
Developer(s)Yves Rosseel (main developer)
Initial release11 May 2010; 16 years ago (2010-05-11)
Stable release
Version 0.6-21, Released on CRAN / 21 December 2025; 10 months ago (2025-12-21)
Repositorygithub.com/yrosseel/lavaan
Written inR
Operating systemWindows, Linux, macOS
Websitelavaan.ugent.be
lavaan, short for "Latent variable analysis"[1], is an open-sourcestructural equation modeling (SEM) package for the statistical programming language R.[2] Created in 2010 by Yves Rosseel, now a full professor at the Department of Data Analysis, Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences, Ghent University[3], lavaan is intended to be a free open-source commercial-quality alternative to commercial SEM software packages such as Mplus or IBM's SPSS Amos.[2][4]

Comparison with other SEM packages

A variety of open-source, free, and commercial structural equation modeling software packages are available besides lavaan, such as Amos, SAS PROC CALIS, R package sem, OpenMx, LISREL, EQS, and Mplus. The main difference between packages is the presence of a graphical interface for model specification and presentation of results. Each package differs in terms of its strengths and weaknesses. lavaan was shown to be feature equivalent to commercial packages, with a compact scripting capability even for complex models as a key strength, and the ability to mimic Mplus and EQS results as a special feature.[5][6] Its main weaknesses are the lack of an integrated graphical user interface and limited options to handle missing data.[5]

Impact

At present, lavaan is considered one of the standard structural equation modeling software packages used by researchers when conducting both observational and experimental research; evidenced in its use in studies, part of software reviews, and published books.[5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12]

It has been downloaded more than 5 million times to date.[13]

Several R packages were developed that complement lavaan, such as:

  • lavaangui: a graphical user interface for the R package lavaan in order to create and visualize lavaan models.[14][15]
  • lavaanPlot: an extension of lavaan to allow ploting of lavaan models.[16]
  • blavaan: an R package, co-developed by Yves Rosseel, for Bayesian latent variable analysis built upon the lavaan package.[17]
  • bmemLavaan: an R package for estimating and testing mediation effects in models specified by lavaan.[18]

References

  1. ↑ "Package: lavaan 0.7-1.2688" (in en). https://yrosseel.r-universe.dev/lavaan. 
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 Rosseel, Yves (2012). "lavaan: An R Package for Structural Equation Modeling". Journal of Statistical Software (Foundation for Open Access Statistics) 48 (2): 1-36. http://www.jstatsoft.org/v48/i02/. Retrieved 2026-02-21. 
  3. ↑ "Prof. Dr. Yves Rosseel" (in en). https://science-academy.ugent.be/en/lesgever/yves-rosseel. 
  4. ↑ "About lavaan" (in en). https://lavaan.ugent.be. 
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 Narayanan, A. (2012). "A Review of Eight Software Packages for Structural Equation Modeling". The American Statistician (Taylor & Francis) 66 (2): 129-138. doi:10.1080/00031305.2012.708641. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00031305.2012.708641. Retrieved 2026-02-21. 
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 El-Sheikh, Ahmed A.; Abonazel, Mohamed R.; Gamil, Noha (2017). "A Review of Software Packages for Structural Equation Modeling: A Comparative Study". Applied Mathematics and Physics (Science and Education Publishing) 5 (3): 85-94. https://pubs.sciepub.com/amp/5/3/2/. Retrieved 2026-02-21. 
  7. ↑ Gana, Kamel; Broc, Guillaume (2019). Structural Equation Modeling with lavaan. Wiley. ISBN 9781119579038. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/book/10.1002/9781119579038. Retrieved 2026-02-21. 
  8. ↑ Loh, W.W. (2025). "Causal Inference with Unobserved Confounding: Leveraging Negative Control Outcomes Using Lavaan". Multivariate Behavioral Research 60 (5): 1029–1041. doi:10.1080/00273171.2025.2507742. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/book/10.1002/9781119579038. Retrieved 2026-02-21. 
  9. ↑ Martínez, I.A.M.; Flores, C.G.C.; Nava, V.X.; Rivera, B.R.G. (2024). "Free VS. Paid Software in Strutural Modeling: Results from Amos and R Studio Lavaan in Organizational Climate Analysis". RGSA : Revista de Gestão Social e Ambiental 18 (11): e010053-21. doi:10.24857/rgsa.v18n11-247. https://rgsa.openaccesspublications.org/rgsa/article/view/10053. Retrieved 2026-06-06. 
  10. ↑ Corbelli, Giuseppe (2026). "Multiplicity Control for Structural Equation Modeling in Lavaan : A Practical Workflow for False Discovery Rate Adjustment". Educational and Psychological Measurement (SAGE Publications). doi:10.1177/00131644261442141. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/00131644261442141. Retrieved 2026-06-06. 
  11. ↑ Osei, I.; Carie, C.A.; Anamalamudi, S.; Boadu, D.; Kwakye, M. (2026). "Structural equation modelling in R: Comparing lavaan and seminr packages". Methodological Innovations (SAGE Publications). doi:10.1177/20597991261445104. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/20597991261445104. Retrieved 2026-06-06. 
  12. ↑ Bryant, F.B.; Satorra, A. (2026). "Comparing Methods of Maximum Likelihood and Unweighted Least-Squares Estimation Across Structural Equation Modeling Software Programs". Structural Equation Modeling: A Multidisciplinary Journal (Taylor & Francis) 33 (2): 323–334. doi:10.1080/10705511.2025.2557445. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/citedby/10.1080/10705511.2025.2557445. Retrieved 2026-06-09. 
  13. ↑ "CRAN R Packages by Number of Downloads" (in en). https://www.datasciencemeta.com/rpackages. 
  14. ↑ "lavaangui: A Visual Tool for Creating lavaan Models (CFA, SEM, Path Analysis) in R" (in en). https://www.regorz-statistik.de/blog/lavaangui.html. 
  15. ↑ Karch, J.D. (2025). "lavaangui: A Web-Based Graphical Interface for Specifying Lavaan Models by Drawing Path Diagrams". Structural Equation Modeling: A Multidisciplinary Journal (Taylor & Francis) 32 (6): 1077–1088. doi:10.1080/10705511.2024.2420678. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10705511.2024.2420678. Retrieved 2026-06-09. 
  16. ↑ "Intro to lavaanPlot" (in en). https://lavaanplot.alexlishinski.com/articles/intro_to_lavaanplot. 
  17. ↑ "blavaan" (in en). https://blavaan.org. 
  18. ↑ "bmemLavaan: An Package for Estimating and Testing Mediation Effect in Mediation Models" (in en). https://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/bmemLavaan/vignettes/R_package-bmemLavaan_vignette.pdf. 

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