vbpm: Variational Bayes Psychometric Models

Variational Bayes estimation for a family of psychometric measurement models. Two models are provided. Variational Bayes factor analysis (vbfa) is a regularized partially confirmatory factor model spanning the confirmatory-exploratory continuum via spike-and-slab priors on the loadings (Chen, Guo, Zhang, and Pan, 2021 <doi:10.1037/met0000293>; Chen, 2023 <doi:10.3758/s13428-022-01884-7>; Jin and Chen, 2025 <doi:10.1080/10705511.2024.2432612>), with an optional dynamic (warm-started) regularization path, an orthogonal bifactor parameterization, and optional sparse residual (local dependence) estimation through a graphical spike-and-slab prior solved by QUIC (Jin, Chen, Yan, and Zhang, 2026 <doi:10.31234/osf.io/dehtv_v2>). Regularized MIMIC (vbmimic) extends this to multiple-indicators multiple-causes models, placing spike-and-slab priors on both the measurement and the structural part (Jin and Chen, 2025 <doi:10.1080/00273171.2025.2483253>). Companion tools compute SEM-like fit statistics, and sweep a factor-count window to report candidate fit, criterion, and between-candidate loading-correspondence measurements without selecting a count (Chen and Jin, 2026 <doi:10.48550/arXiv.2607.07159>). Data generators for either model family are also provided.

Version:	0.9.1
Depends:	R (≥ 4.1)
Imports:	Rcpp, MASS, stats
LinkingTo:	Rcpp, RcppArmadillo
Suggests:	numDeriv, testthat (≥ 3.0.0), knitr, rmarkdown
Published:	2026-09-05
DOI:	10.32614/CRAN.package.vbpm
Author:	Jinsong Chen [aut, cre], Yi Jin [aut]
Maintainer:	Jinsong Chen <jinsong.chen at live.com>
BugReports:	https://github.com/Jinsong-Chen/vbpm/issues
License:	GPL-3
URL:	https://github.com/Jinsong-Chen/vbpm
NeedsCompilation:	yes
Citation:	vbpm citation info
Materials:	README, NEWS
CRAN checks:	vbpm results

Documentation:

Reference manual:	vbpm.html , vbpm.pdf
Vignettes:	Bifactor Structures and PEFA Sweeps (source, R code) PEFA: Factor-Count Evidence from a Fixed Window (source, R code) Getting started with vbpm: partially confirmatory factor analysis (source, R code) MIMIC models with vbmimic: regularizing measurement and structure (source, R code)

Downloads:

Package source:	vbpm_0.9.1.tar.gz
Windows binaries:	r-devel: vbpm_0.9.1.zip, r-release: vbpm_0.9.1.zip, r-oldrel: vbpm_0.9.1.zip
macOS binaries:	r-release (arm64): not available, r-oldrel (arm64): vbpm_0.9.1.tgz, r-release (x86_64): vbpm_0.9.1.tgz, r-oldrel (x86_64): vbpm_0.9.1.tgz

Linking:

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