Latent class analysis with multiple latent group variables

Abstract

This study develops a new type of latent class analysis (LCA) in order to explain the associations between one latent variable and several other categorical latent variables. Our model postulates that the prevalence of the latent variable of interest is affected by another latent variable composed of other several latent variables. For the parameter estimation, we propose deterministic annealing EM (DAEM) to deal with local maxima problem in the proposed model. We perform simulation study to demonstrate how DAEM can find the set of parameter estimates at the global maximum of the likelihood over the repeated samples. We apply the proposed LCA model in an investigation of the effect of and joint patterns for drug-using behavior to violent behavior among US high school male students using data from the Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System 2015. Considering the age of male adolescents as a covariate influencing violent behavior, we identified three classes of violent behavior and three classes of drug-using behavior. We also discovered that the prevalence of violent behavior is affected by the type of drug used for drug-using behavior.