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ackwards: Bass-Ackwards Hierarchical Structural Analysis

Implements Goldberg's (2006) <doi:10.1016/j.jrp.2006.01.001> bass-ackwards method and modern descendants for hierarchical structural analysis. Extracts solutions from 1 to k factors using principal component analysis (PCA), exploratory factor analysis (EFA), or exploratory structural equation modeling (ESEM) engines, then characterizes the hierarchy via between-level factor-score correlations computed via exact linear algebra (Waller, 2007, <doi:10.1016/j.jrp.2006.08.005>) or materialized scores. Includes the Forbes (2023) <doi:10.1037/met0000546> extension for redundancy pruning and all-levels cross-correlations.

Version: 0.1.1
Depends: R (≥ 4.1.0)
Imports: cli, generics, psych, rlang, stats, utils
Suggests: covr, EFAtools, future, future.apply, ggplot2, gt, knitr, lavaan (≥ 0.6-13), rmarkdown, testthat (≥ 3.0.0)
Published: 2026-07-24
DOI: 10.32614/CRAN.package.ackwards (may not be active yet)
Author: Jeffrey M. Girard ORCID iD [aut, cre], Miriam K. Forbes [cph] (Author of the bundled AMH correlation matrix (data/forbes2023.rda), CC-BY 4.0)
Maintainer: Jeffrey M. Girard <me at jmgirard.com>
BugReports: https://github.com/jmgirard/ackwards/issues
License: MIT + file LICENSE
URL: https://jmgirard.github.io/ackwards/, https://github.com/jmgirard/ackwards
NeedsCompilation: no
Citation: ackwards citation info
Materials: README, NEWS
CRAN checks: ackwards results

Documentation:

Reference manual: ackwards.html , ackwards.pdf
Vignettes: Choosing an Engine: PCA, EFA, and ESEM (source)
The Forbes Extension: Skip-Level Connections and Pruning (source)
Reproducing Forbes (2023): The AMH Applied Example (source)
Replicability-Gated Hierarchies: A Recommended Workflow (source)
Interpreting and Labeling Factors (source, R code)
Introduction to Bass-Ackwards Analysis (source)
Ordinal Data: Polychoric Correlations and WLSMV (source)
Choosing k: How Many Factors? (source)
Customizing the Hierarchy Diagram (source)

Downloads:

Package source: ackwards_0.1.1.tar.gz
Windows binaries: r-devel: not available, r-release: not available, r-oldrel: not available
macOS binaries: r-release (arm64): ackwards_0.1.1.tgz, r-oldrel (arm64): not available, r-release (x86_64): ackwards_0.1.1.tgz, r-oldrel (x86_64): ackwards_0.1.1.tgz

Linking:

Please use the canonical form https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=ackwards to link to this page.

These binaries (installable software) and packages are in development.
They may not be fully stable and should be used with caution. We make no claims about them.
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