Principles of Path Analysis

Sociologists have used for some time the methods of classical statistics in the interpretation of many varieties of sociological data. However, due to the lack of a procedure for incorporating statistical results into social theory, parameter estimates have seldom had a direct bearing on the evaluation and reformulation of sociological theory. This state of affairs has stimulated recent discussions of linear causal models as a procedure for bridging the gap between sociological theory on the one hand and the results of classical statistical analysis on the other. Although variations in emphasis exist, the essential idea of the causal model involves the construction of an oversimplified model of reality in the sense that the model considers only a limited number of variables