It is noted that a 'forwards incremental'decomposition of variance meshes particularly well with a recursive path analysis formulation of a social process, and it can readily be calculated from the model, knowing only the paths. From this it is suggested that it may be substantively illuminating to trace residual effects forwards through a standardized model, and not to confine interpretation of residual effects to the 'parent' variables. A simple interpretation of the residual path is also presented.
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