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Greetings, I am working on a LPA and we have determined that the appropriate number of classes is 5 based on the lowest BIC. However, we have one class that only has 7 subjects (4% of the sample). Is it problematic to have such a small sample within a particular class? Thanks! Dan |
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Mostly in terms of trying to relate that class to other variables. |
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Jon Heron posted on Saturday, December 19, 2015 - 12:32 am
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It's fairly common to use class size as a selection criterion. Probably not good practice from a statistical perspective but its pointless having a solution you can do nothing with. |
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Thank you so much for your responses. I'm a bit of a novice with these types of analyses, so please bear with me. Could you provide a little more detail regarding why you couldn't relate a very small class to other variables? What are the consequences of selecting a solution that includes a very small class? Thank you! Dan |
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The parameters that are specific to that relationship would be estimated by so few subjects that their estimates and SEs might not be good. |
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