Hello, I have what seems like it should be an easy problem to solve but I am still getting a handle of MPlus and I haven't had any luck figuring this out thus far. I am using a dataset that contains a "class" variable from a previously conducted LCA. I want to be able to find the means for each class (class 1, 2, and 3) on a set of continuous variables, and also indicate whether the differences in the means are significant. Thank you!
You can do a multiple-group analysis where the class variable is group. In this analysis, the different means of the continuous variables can be given parameter labels and Model Test can be used to look for significant differences.
Hmm, It actually didn't have any fit information at all...I'm thinking that this was because I used type=basic so changed it to type=complex (what I've been using for other analyses).
I got a more detailed output with fit information. However, there is warning about standard errors being wrong because I'm using the useobservations option - it suggests switching to the subpopulation option, but doing this gets an error message stating you can't use subpopulation with multiple groups.
There's also a message that states, WALD'S TEST COULD NOT BE COMPUTED BECAUSE OF A SINGULAR COVARIANCE MATRIX.
Any ideas about how to resolve this, or if there's another way of going about getting the means for each class? Thanks so much for your time.
The SUBPOPULATION option is not available for multiple groups. It is probably not necessary. Run each group separately using USEOBSERVATIONS in one analysis and SUBPOPULATION in another. Compare them. If the results are close, use USEOBSERVATIONS in the multiple group analysis.