Latent structure facilitates development of research and theory

A latent variable is a variable that you can never observe directly. It can be inferred by statistical model by manifest (observable) variable. Being able to classify latent variable from observations, observations can be categorized in a new way which is rather unobservable.

For continuous manifest variable, the latent variable can be categorized (discrete groups) or continuous. Mixture model / Taxometric model can be used to find the categorized latent variable while factor analysis is used in general for continuous latent variable.

Implication

Latent structure facilitates development of research and theory. Distinct internet and Smartphone user groups (e.g. low, moderate and high addiction) were identified in each sex (Mok et al., 2014). The result showed that gender difference exists in internet and Smartphone usage and implied such addiction in male and female should be considered separately.

However, latent variable analysis should be used carefully. Taxonomy of life-course-persistent and adolescent-limited offending has been treated as categorized variable (Moffitt, 1993) which showed impact on research on delinquency and conduct disorder. It is recently found that the disorder may be continuous rather than distinct. Therefore, one should focus on investigating relative stability in delinquency dimensions than identifying distinct delinquency behavior (Piquero, 2008).

References

Moffitt, T. E. (1993). Adolescence-limited and life-course-persistent antisocial behavior: a developmental taxonomy. Psychological review, 100(4), 674.

Mok, J.-Y., Choi, S.-W., Kim, D.-J., Choi, J.-S., Lee, J., Ahn, H., . . . Song, W.-Y. (2014). Latent class analysis on internet and smartphone addiction in college students. Neuropsychiatric disease and treatment, 10, 817.

Piquero, A. R. (2008). Taking stock of developmental trajectories of criminal activity over the life course The long view of crime: A synthesis of longitudinal research (pp. 23-78): Springer.

Ross, C. A., Ellason, J. W., & Anderson, G. (1995). A factor analysis of the Dissociative Experiences Scale (DES) in dissociative identity disorder. Dissociation: Progress in the Dissociative Disorders.

Waller, N., Putnam, F. W., & Carlson, E. B. (1996). Types of dissociation and dissociative types: A taxometric analysis of dissociative experiences. Psychological Methods, 1(3), 300.