GMM - including covariates or not? PreviousNext
Mplus Discussion > Growth Modeling of Longitudinal Data >
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 SF Wang posted on Thursday, September 12, 2013 - 10:15 am
Hi,

We usually need to do further analyses based on the class membership obtained from GMM, such as identifying predictors for class membership.

I have heard some people saying that including covariates in GMM and then in further analyses seems like circular - they are used to form the classes and then were examined whether they are predictors of the classes, so they advocate not to include covariates in GMM.

Personally, I don't agree. If those variables are significant factors for the class membership, we should include them in GMM, so that GMM could provide a better classification.

If we should include covariates for this purpose, should we have the covariates for both the random effects and the latent classes, or just the latent classes?

Thank you very much!

Shufang
 Linda K. Muthen posted on Thursday, September 12, 2013 - 1:29 pm
There are pros and cons to this. See Web Note 15 on the website for a discussion.

You should have the covariates for both the random effects and the latent classes.
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