In Search of Golden Rules: Comment on Hypothesis-Testing Approaches to Setting Cutoff Values for Fit Indexes and Dangers in Overgeneralizing Hu and Bentler's (1999) Findings

Goodness-of-fit (GOF) indexes provide "rules of thumb" - recommended cutoff values for assessing fit in structural equation modeling. Hu and Bender (1999) proposed a more rigorous approach to evaluating decision rules based on GOF indexes and, on this basis, proposed new and more stringent cutoff values for many indexes. This article discusses potential problems underlying the hypothesis-testing rationale of their research, which is more appropriate to testing statistical significance than evaluating GOF. Many of their misspecified models resulted in a fit that should have been deemed acceptable according to even their new, more demanding criteria. Hence, rejection of these acceptable-misspecified models…

• AR
  Australian Research Council