A Primer For Soft Modeling

A practical guide to "soft modeling" that relies on a computer application strategy, this book is intended for researchers and students interested in a structural equation modeling approach to path analysis that solves many measurement issues encountered in social science research.

A Primer on Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM) by Joseph F. Hair, Jr., G. Tomas M. Hult, Christian Ringle, and Marko Sarstedt is a practical guide that provides concise instructions on how to use partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM), an evolving statistical technique, to conduct research and obtain solutions. Featuring the latest research, new examples using the SmartPLS software, and expanded discussions throughout, the Second Edition is designed to be easily understood by those with limited statistical and mathematical training who want to pursue research opportunities in new ways.

"A Primer on Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM), by Hair, Hult, Ringle, and Sarstedt, provides a concise yet very practical guide to understanding and using PLS structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM). PLS-SEM is evolving as a statistical modeling technique and its use has increased exponentially in recent years within a variety of disciplines, due to the recognition that PLS-SEM's distinctive methodological features make it a viable alternative to the more popular covariance-based SEM approach. This text includes extensive examples on SmartPLS software, and is accompanied by multiple data sets that are available for download from the accompanying website (www.pls-sem.com). "--Publisher's website.

Now in its second edition, this edited book presents recent progress and techniques in partial least squares path modeling (PLS-PM), and provides a comprehensive overview of the current state-of-the-art in PLS-PM research. Like the previous edition, the book is divided into three parts: the first part emphasizes the basic concepts and extensions of the PLS-PM method; the second part discusses the methodological issues that have been the focus of recent developments, and the last part deals with real-world applications of the PLS-PM method in various disciplines. This new edition broadens the scope of the first edition and consists of entirely new original contributions, again written by expert authors in the field, on a wide range of topics, including: how to perform quantile composite path modeling with R; the rationale and justification for using PLS-PM in top-tier journals; psychometric properties of three weighting schemes and why PLS-PM is a better fit to mode B; a comprehensive review of PLS software; how to perform out-of-sample predictions with ordinal consistent partial least squares; multicollinearity issues in PLS-PM using ridge regression; theorizing and testing specific indirect effects in PLS and considering their effect size; how to run hierarchical models and available approaches; and how to apply necessary condition analysis (NCA) in PLS-PM. This book will appeal to researchers interested in the latest advances in PLS-PM as well as masters and Ph.D. students in a variety of disciplines who use PLS-PM methods. With clear guidelines on selecting and using PLS-PM, especially those related to composite models, readers will be brought up to date on recent debates in the field.

In the 1990s it is no longer "news" that families do not operate independently from other social organizations and institutions. Instead, it is generally recognized that families are embedded in a complex set of relationships with other institutions and contexts outside the family. In spite of this recognition, a great deal remains to be discovered about the ways in which families are influenced by these outside agencies or how families influence the functioning of children and adults in these extra-familial settings--school, work, day-care, or peer group contexts. Moreover, little is known about the nature of the processes that account for this mutual influence between families and other societal institutions and settings. The goal of this volume is to present examples from a series of ongoing research programs that are beginning to provide some tentative answers to these questions. The result of a summer workshop characterized by lively exchanges not only between speakers and the audience, but among participants in small group discussions as well, this volume attempts to communicate some of the dynamism and excitement that was evident at the conference. In the final analysis, this book should stimulate further theoretical and empirical advances in understanding how families relate to other contexts.

This edited volume brings together some of the best papers from the 2022 Conference on Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM), held at the Babeș-Bolyai University, Cluj, Romania. The volume seeks to expand the current research on PLS-SEM and promote the method’s application in the scientific community. It gathers research from scholars in many different fields who work on the advancement of PLS-SEM and who apply the method to explain and predict behavioral phenomena. Researchers today can draw on a wide array of different PLS-SEM-based algorithms, complementary methods, and model evaluation metrics. Tying in with these developments, the first part of this book documents methodological advances of PLS-SEM, which extend the researchers’ current toolbox of methods. The following parts demonstrate state-of-the-art applications of PLS-SEM in various fields such as consumer behavior, hospitality, human resource management, entrepreneurship, and organizational behavior. Special emphasis is placed on studies that apply complementary methods to offer a more nuanced analysis of the research questions.

This book makes general considerations regarding global changes and contemporary economic issues in Asian countries in real terms. It offers a collection of original conference papers from the annual international conferences on “Contemporary economic issues in Asian countries” (CEIAC Conference) commenced in 2022 in collaboration with CIFOR-ICRAF, Sungkyunkwan University (Korea), and Tamkang University (Taiwan). The theme of the CEIAC Conference 2022 deals with broad aspects of the contemporary economic issues in Asian countries. It covers topics such as economics and business (economic theory, national and international income distribution, macroeconomic policies, sectors of economy, productivity developments, financial market, business governance, bank financing, etc.), green economy and sustainable development (developing process, development policy, public policy, sustainable growth, green growth, etc.), and international trade and investment (international trade theory, free trade agreements, tariffs, intellectual property, international law, etc.). The book would interest a wide array of professors, researchers, lecturers, students in fields of economics, consultants, and decision makers interested in the issues related to economic issues in Asia.

New Perspectives in Partial Least Squares and Related Methods shares original, peer-reviewed research from presentations during the 2012 partial least squares methods meeting (PLS 2012). This was the 7th meeting in the series of PLS conferences and the first to take place in the USA. PLS is an abbreviation for Partial Least Squares and is also sometimes expanded as projection to latent structures. This is an approach for modeling relations between data matrices of different types of variables measured on the same set of objects. The twenty-two papers in this volume, which include three invited contributions from our keynote speakers, provide a comprehensive overview of the current state of the most advanced research related to PLS and related methods. Prominent scientists from around the world took part in PLS 2012 and their contributions covered the multiple dimensions of the partial least squares-based methods. These exciting theoretical developments ranged from partial least squares regression and correlation, component based path modeling to regularized regression and subspace visualization. In following the tradition of the six previous PLS meetings, these contributions also included a large variety of PLS approaches such as PLS metamodels, variable selection, sparse PLS regression, distance based PLS, significance vs. reliability, and non-linear PLS. Finally, these contributions applied PLS methods to data originating from the traditional econometric/economic data to genomics data, brain images, information systems, epidemiology, and chemical spectroscopy. Such a broad and comprehensive volume will also encourage new uses of PLS models in work by researchers and students in many fields.