Running head: LATENT CLASS ANALYSIS FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS 1 Ten Frequently Asked Questions about Latent Class Analysis Karen Nylund-Gibson, Ph.D. University of California, Santa Barbara Department of Education Santa Barbara, CA 93106
[email protected] Andrew Young Choi, M.A. University of California, Santa Barbara Department of Counseling, Clinical, and School Psychology Santa Barbara, CA 93106
[email protected] Author Note Karen Nylund-Gibson, Department of Education, University of California, Santa Barbara; Andrew Young Choi, Department of Counseling, Clinical, and School Psychology, University of California, Santa Barbara. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Karen Nylund-Gibson at
[email protected] The research reported here was supported in part by the Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education, through Grant #R305A160157 to the University of California, Santa Barbara. The opinions expressed are those of the authors and do not represent views of the Institute of Education Sciences or the U.S. Department of Education. Nylund-Gibson, K., & Choi, A. Y. (In press). Ten frequently asked questions about latent class analysis. Translational Issues in Psychological Science. © 2018, American Psychological Association. This paper is not the copy of record and may not exactly replicate the final, authoritative version of the article. Please do not copy or cite without authors' permission. The final article will be available, upon publication, via its DOI: 10.1037/tps0000176 LATENT CLASS ANALYSIS FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS 2 ABSTRACT Latent class analysis (LCA) is a statistical method used to identify unobserved subgroups in a population with a chosen set of indicators. Given the increasing popularity of LCA, our aim is to equip psychological researchers with the theoretical and statistical fundamentals that we believe will facilitate the application of LCA models in practice.