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Exploring the Latent Structures of Psychological Constructs in Social Development Using the Dimensional–Categorical Spectrum
Author(s) -
Masyn Katherine E.,
Henderson Craig E.,
Greenbaum Paul E.
Publication year - 2010
Publication title -
social development
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.078
H-Index - 91
eISSN - 1467-9507
pISSN - 0961-205X
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-9507.2009.00573.x
Subject(s) - categorical variable , psychology , latent variable , latent variable model , latent class model , construct (python library) , structural equation modeling , developmental psychology , juvenile delinquency , cognitive psychology , statistics , mathematics , computer science , programming language
This paper provides an introduction to a recently developed conceptual framework—the dimensional–categorical spectrum—for utilizing general factor mixture models to explore the latent structures of psychological constructs. This framework offers advantages over traditional latent variable models that usually employ either continuous latent factors or categorical latent class variables to characterize the latent structure and require an a priori assumption about the underlying nature of the construct as either purely dimension or purely categorical. The modeling process is discussed in detail and then illustrated with data on the delinquency items of Achenbach's child behavior checklist from a sample of children in the National Adolescent and Child Treatment Study.