Another point to make is that different individuals prefer different features. One point in this regard is that most of these programs are updated fairly frequently, making any description I might give of the limitations of a program potentially out of date. (2) New users of SEM inevitably wish to know which of these programs is best. There are also two packages in R, lavaan and 'sem', which are of course available for free. A number of other programs are also available including EQS, Amos, CALIS (a module of SAS), SEPATH (a module of Statistica), and Mplus. The first of the widely used programs of this sort was LISREL, which as of this writing is still available. (1) There are quite a few software programs currently available for performing structural equation modeling.
There are several main points to be made about the software programs that can be used for performing SEM.
