Covariates and Distal Outcomes PreviousNext
Mplus Discussion > Latent Variable Mixture Modeling >
Message/Author
 eithne hunt posted on Friday, March 07, 2014 - 1:59 am
Dear Drs. Muthen,

I am new to Mplus and LCA/LPA.

I am using DCON with a distal outcome. I wish to include two other covariates in the model - can you advise as to which Auxiliary command to use or should these covariates be specified in the model command?

Also I note the error message that DCON cannot be used with KNOWNCLASS - is there a workaround this?

Thank you.
 Linda K. Muthen posted on Friday, March 07, 2014 - 9:33 am
DCON cannot be used with KNOWNCLASS or with any of the other AUXILIARY settings. There is no workaround.
 ek2014 posted on Monday, March 10, 2014 - 5:57 am
Thank you.

Can I use AUXILIARY – R3STEP for covariates [eg social class and school year] and DU3STEP/DE3STEP for distal outcome [eg quality of life] in the one model at the same time?
 Linda K. Muthen posted on Monday, March 10, 2014 - 8:31 am
No.
 ek2014 posted on Monday, March 10, 2014 - 8:46 am
Thank you for the prompt response.
 Seung Bin Cho posted on Monday, September 22, 2014 - 10:11 am
Hello, Dr. Muthen.

I used auxiliary command and dcat/dcon to compare frequencies and proportions of distal outcome variables. However, the result was far from expected.
The results of auxiliary variables were not consistent with cross-tabulations and mean comparisons using most likely class membership from the same input program. The entropy was .885, so I don't think the uncertainty came into play.
One thing I'm suspicious was the class order switched. There were three classes, in the descending order of 1-2-3 in terms of class size. However, in the distal outcome section of output, the classes were in the ascending order of 3-1-2 in terms of approximate SE. In addition, if I switched the order by its approximate SE, the result was consistent with crosstab and mean comparison using most likely class membership.

1. Is it possible that classes switch in distal outcome output using dcon/dcat option?
2. If so, how can we check the correct order of class.
3. If not, could you guess what could possibly went wrong?
4. In this case, with entropy .885, can I report proportion and mean comparisons based on most likely class membership, instead of using auxiliary command?
5. Could you suggest any better ways?

Thank you for your help.
 Bengt O. Muthen posted on Monday, September 22, 2014 - 12:57 pm
Please send your outputs from the different steps to Support.
 Bengt O. Muthen posted on Wednesday, September 24, 2014 - 4:30 pm
To follow up on this thread - this user ran into a problem in version 7.11 where DCAT/DCON gave incorrect results when TECH11 and TECH14 were also requested. This will be corrected in version 7.3.
 Dina Dajani posted on Thursday, December 03, 2015 - 11:12 am
Hello,

Can you please advise on the first question of this thread:

How do you specify a covariate when performing a regression with Lanza's DCAT. I am regressing a categorical distal outcome on my latent class variable and wish to include a categorical covariate (Distal ON Covariate).

Thank you,
 Bengt O. Muthen posted on Thursday, December 03, 2015 - 5:03 pm
See section 3.2 of the paper on our website:

Asparouhov, T. & Muthén, B. (2014). Auxiliary variables in mixture modeling: Using the BCH method in Mplus to estimate a distal outcome model and an arbitrary second model. Web note 21.
 Dina Dajani posted on Thursday, December 03, 2015 - 6:32 pm
Thank you very much Dr. Muthen,

I also have one distal outcome that is categorical. According to the Web note you posted above, DCAT is my best option. But when I used this, my results seemed very strange (see below). The probabilities look correct but the odds ratios and CI's do not. Do you know what might be the problem? Thank you for any help.
Best,
Dina Dajani

PRIDX
Prob S.E. Odds Ratio S.E. 2.5% C.I. 97.5% C.I.

Class 1
Category 1 0.987 0.013 1.000 0.000 1.000 1.000
Category 2 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000 *******
Category 3 0.013 0.013 0.000 0.000 0.000 *******
Class 2
Category 1 0.177 0.076 1.000 0.000 1.000 1.000
Category 2 0.545 0.075 0.000 0.000 0.000 *******
Category 3 0.278 0.063 0.000 0.000 0.000 *******
Class 3
Category 1 0.000 0.000 1.000 0.000 1.000 1.000
Category 2 0.389 0.049 1.000 0.000 1.000 1.000
Category 3 0.611 0.049 1.000 0.000 1.000 1.000
 Bengt O. Muthen posted on Friday, December 04, 2015 - 6:20 am
Please send relevant input, data, and output to Support along with your license number.
 Kathrin Wolf posted on Tuesday, November 14, 2017 - 3:50 am
Hallo,

I'm using version 7.4 (Mixture Add-on). Is it possible that the problem below (as posted above) does still exist or has that been fixed?

Bengt O. Muthen posted on Wednesday, September 24, 2014 - 4:30 pm "To follow up on this thread - this user ran into a problem in version 7.11 where DCAT/DCON gave incorrect results when TECH11 and TECH14 were also requested. This will be corrected in version 7.3."

Thanks,
Kathrin
 Linda K. Muthen posted on Tuesday, November 14, 2017 - 2:34 pm
Please send the input and data set to support and we will check on this.
Back to top
Add Your Message Here
Post:
Username: Posting Information:
This is a private posting area. Only registered users and moderators may post messages here.
Password:
Options: Enable HTML code in message
Automatically activate URLs in message
Action: