What if I Have More Than Two Groups in My Full Structural Model Analysis?

Let’s say you have three groups in your analysis and want to see if the groups are significantly different from one another. AMOS will let you set up a third group in the models window and will run the analysis across all three groups. The problem is that AMOS examines these potential differences as a whole across the groups. It will let you know if your relationships are significantly different across all three groups, but it will not break out where the differ- ences are coming from. For instance, imagine you run the three group analysis and it says all of your relationships are significantly different across the groups. Those results may be that group 1 and 2 are highly different and group 3 is not really different from either group. The analysis will simply tell you if there is a difference across all the groups. The difference across group 1 and 2 may be so strong that the analysis states there is a difference across all groups. Consequently, setting up a third group in AMOS is not that beneficial and provides little information about where differences lie.To perform an analysis with three groups, you will have to perform multiple two group analyses. So with three groups, you would need to perform a two group analysis between groups 1 and 2, groups 1 and 3, and groups 2 and 3.This is the only way to see differences between the groups and also determine if specific relationships are different across the It is not an ideal solution because it is labor intensive, but it will give you the answers you need until AMOS comes up with an update that will allow you to examine differences across more than two groups.

Source: Thakkar, J.J. (2020). “Procedural Steps in Structural Equation Modelling”. In: Structural Equation Modelling. Studies in Systems, Decision and Control, vol 285. Springer, Singapore.