Dashed indicator arrows deliberately signal a noncausal construction rather than cause

Evidence

If these arrows are not given their usual causal interpretation it is not exactly clear how to interpret them. Presumably they would be interpreted as correlational but not causal. Nevertheless, how this correlational interpretation is to be explained in terms of the phenomena under consideration is left to be determined. This is one reason why the basic framework uses dashed arrows to symbolize the “indicator of” relationship. These dashed arrows explicitly suggest a noncausal relationship. — Gary Goertz, Social Science Concepts and Measurement, 342

Categorization

• XREF: Echoes debates over measurement invariance and over causal versus constitutive relations in structural equation modeling.