ESTIMATING THE CONCOMITANT-VARIABLE LATENT-CLASS MODEL WITH THE EM ALGORITHM

Latent class analysis assumes the existence of a categorical latent va riable that explains the relations between a set of categorical manife st variables. Simultaneous latent class analysis deals with sets of mu ltiway contingency tables simultaneously. In this way an explanatory c ategorical grouping variable is related to latent class results. In th is article ta discuss a tool called the concomitant-variable latent-cl ass model, which generalizes this work to continuous explanatory varia bles. An EM estimation procedure to estimate the model is worked out i n derail, and the model is applied to an example on juvenile delinquen cy.