A realistic perspective on pattern representation in growth data: comment on Bauer and Curran (2003) |
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Authors: | Cudeck Robert Henly Susan J |
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Affiliation: | Department of Psychology, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis 55455, USA. cudeck@umn.edu |
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Abstract: | D. J. Bauer and P. J. Curran (2003) cautioned that results obtained from growth mixture models may sometimes be inaccurate. The problem they addressed occurs when a growth mixture model is applied to a single, general population of individuals but findings incorrectly support the conclusion that there are 2 subpopulations. In an artificial sampling experiment, they showed that this can occur when the variables in the population have a nonnormal distribution. A realistic perspective is that although a healthy skepticism to complex statistical results is appropriate, there are no true models to discover. Consequently, the issue of model misspecification is irrelevant in practical terms. The purpose of a mathematical model is to summarize data, to formalize the dynamics of a behavioral process, and to make predictions. All of this is scientifically valuable and can be accomplished with a carefully developed model, even though the model is false. |
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