CFA in R: Observed variables missing error with lavaan package

CFA
1

Hey everyone, I’m stuck with a CFA problem using R. I’m trying to use the lavaan package but keep getting an error about missing observed variables. Here’s what’s happening:

Error: lavaan can't find these variables: V1 V2 V3 V4 V5 V6 V7 V8 V9 V10 V11 V12 V13 V14 V15 V16 V17 V18 V19 V20 V21 V22 V23 V24 V25 V26

My code looks like this:

data <- read.csv('my_data.csv')

model <- '
  Factor1 =~ V1 + V2 + V3 + V4 + V5 + V6 + V7 + V8
  Factor2 =~ V9 + V10 + V11 + V12 + V13 + V14 + V15 + V16
  Factor3 =~ V17 + V18 + V19 + V20 + V21 + V22 + V23 + V24 + V25 + V26
'

result <- cfa(model, data = data, estimator = 'ML')

I can do other stuff with my data so I know it loaded okay. What am I doing wrong? Any ideas would be super helpful. Thanks!

2

hey there! have u tried printing out ur data frame to see what the column names actually are? sometimes csv files can be tricky. maybe try print(head(data)) or colnames(data) to check. could be ur variables are named differently than u expect. hope that helps!

3

Hey Iris_92Paint! :slightly_smiling_face: Looks like you’re having a bit of a puzzle with your CFA. I’ve run into similar hiccups before, so I totally get the frustration. Have you considered that maybe your column names in the CSV might not be exactly what lavaan’s looking for?

Sometimes CSV files can be a bit tricky, especially if they were saved from different programs. What if you tried something like this:

print(names(data))

This should show you exactly what your column names are. If they’re not V1, V2, etc., that could explain the error.

Also, just curious - where did your data come from? Sometimes if it’s from a survey tool or something, the column names might be totally different. In that case, you might need to do a bit of renaming before running your CFA.

Let me know what you find out! I’m really interested to see what the issue turns out to be. CFA can be such a finicky beast sometimes, right? :sweat_smile:

4

It looks like you’re encountering a common issue with variable naming in lavaan. The package is case-sensitive, so if your actual column names in the CSV file don’t exactly match ‘V1’, ‘V2’, etc., lavaan won’t find them.

Try checking your data frame with names(data) or str(data) to see the exact column names. If they’re different (e.g., lowercase ‘v1’ instead of ‘V1’), you’ll need to adjust your model specification accordingly.

Alternatively, you could rename your variables to match the model:

colnames(data) <- paste0('V', 1:ncol(data))

This will rename all columns to V1, V2, etc. Just make sure this matches your intended variable order.

If the problem persists, double-check that your CSV actually contains these variables and that there are no hidden characters or spaces in the column names. Hope this helps!