A Note on the Use of Item Parceling in Structural Equation Modeling with Missing Data

Item parceling procedure may be applied to alleviate some difficulties in analysis with missing data and/or nonnormal data in structural equation modeling. A simulation study was conducted to investigate how item parceling behaves under various conditions in structural equation model with missing and nonnormal distributed data. Design factors included missing mechanism, percentage of missingness, distribution of item data, and sample size. Results showed that analysis conducted at the parcel level yielded lower model rejection rates than analysis based on the individual items, and the patterns were consistent across missing mechanism, percentage of missing, and distribution of item data. In addition, parcel-level analyses resulted in comparable parameter estimates to item-level analyses.