Missing cells in Latent Transition Mo... PreviousNext
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 Mark Burton posted on Monday, May 09, 2016 - 10:16 am
Hello,

I am conducting a 3-step LTA for continuous variables a 2 time points (pre-treatment and post-treatment) with a moderating variable (treatment condition). The best fitting LTA model according to the log-likelihood and adj BIC is a 4 class solution.

However, I get a warning message for a non-positive definite product matrix and another stating that a number of logit parameters were fixed to prevent singularity. The fixed parameters are regression coefficients for transitions with empty cells. In total I have 6 (out of 32) transition paths that are empty and 7 with just 1 person transitioning. The model estimation terminated normally.

Can I ignore these warnings or is there something fundamentally problematic about empty cells in LTA? If so, why might this be the best-fitting model, and what can I do to get rid of the warnings?

Thank you in advance
 Bengt O. Muthen posted on Tuesday, May 10, 2016 - 6:47 pm
If these logit estimates correspond to probabilities of zero (empty cells) you are ok to ignore the warning. Having empty transition cells is not a problem.
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