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Bootstrapping approximate fit indexes in structural equation modeling (SEM) is of great importance because most fit indexes do not have tractable analytic distributions. Model-based bootstrap, which has been proposed to obtain the distribution of the model chi-square statistic under the null hypothesis (Bollen 2007) is ideal for bootstrapping fit indexes that are based on the chi-square. This method transforms the data so that the “parent” population has the population noncentrality parameter equal to the estimated noncentrality in the original sample. We conducted a simulation study to evaluate the performance of the YHY bootstrap and the naive bootstrap for 4 indexes: RMSEA, CFI, goodness-of-fit index (GFI), and standardized root mean square residual (SRMR). We found that for RMSEA and CFI, the CIs under the YHY bootstrap had relatively good coverage rates for all conditions, whereas the CIs under the naive bootstrap had very low coverage rates when the fitted model had large degrees of freedom. However, for GFI and SRMR, the CIs under both bootstrap methods had poor coverage rates in most conditions.
Zhang et al. (Wed,) studied this question.