Beginner Resources: Essential materials for starting your journey with SmartPLS
Key Literature
📢 Do Not Miss the Upcoming Special Issues!
Tutorials
- Selecting a SmartPLS Workspace Folder
- Create Your First Project
- Import a Data File (Raw Data or Covariance Matrix)
- Your First PLS Path Model 👉 SmartPLS Software Review Article
- PLS-SEM Case Studies Using SmartPLS in the Primer Book
- Your First Regression Model
- Your First CB-SEM Model 👉 CB-SEM in SmartPLS Tutorial Article
- Your First GSCA Model
Recommended Video Sources
- PLS-SEM Academy by Christian M. Ringle and Marko Sarstedt: Access comprehensive online videos, exercises, and case studies to master SmartPLS and earn a certificate.
- YouTube videos by James Gaskins: Watch over 30 videos dedicated to SmartPLS 4 by James Gaskin on YouTube.
- Research with Fawad: Explore a collection of over 60 videos covering SmartPLS 4 on Fawad's YouTube channel.
- Dhaval Maheta's YouTube series: Take a look at a collection of over 35 videos on SmarPLS 4 by Dhaval Maheta on YouTube.
- Keynote speech by Wen-Lung Shiau at the SASEM 2025 conference: Multi-memethod structural equation modeling (SEM).
Sample Projects
Discover our curated collection of downloadable sample projects, complete with data files. You can import and run these examples in SmartPLS.
Advanced User Resources
Literature
- Recommended Readings
- PLS-SEM Books
- PLS-SEM Special Issues
- PLS-SEM Review Articles
- PLS-SEM Methods Articles
- PLS-SEM Applications
- PLS-SEM Glossary
Algorithm Descriptions
Explore comprehensive descriptions of all algorithms and their Settings.
Special Knowledge
- Missing Values
- Create/Add Indicators to the Data Set
- Composite, Common Factor, and Mixed Models
- How to Interpret Excess Kurtosis and Skewness
- Outer Weights Initialization and Pre-specification
- Thresholds for Different Result Colors in the SmartPLS Report
- PLS-SEM Compared with CB-SEM
- When to Use PLS-SEM (and When Not)
- Choosing Between PLS-SEM and CB-SEM
- Heywood Cases in CB-SEM
