Canonical Correlation Analysis and Structural Equation Modeling: What Do They Have in Common?

This article illustrates the relation between structural equation modeling (SEM) and canonical correlation analysis (CCA). The representation of CCA in SEM may provide some important interpretive information that is not available from conventional CCA, that is, statistical tests for the canonical function and index coefficients, and statistical tests for individual canonical functions. Hierarchically, the relation between the two analytic approaches suggests that SEM stands to be a more general analytic approach. For researchers interested in these techniques, an understanding of the interrelation among them can be helpful to our choice of analytic method.