Latent Variables in Psychology and the Social Sciences

The paper discusses the use of latent variables in psychology and social science research. Local independence, expected value true scores, and nondeterministic functions of observed variables are three types of definitions for latent variables. These definitions are reviewed and an alternative "sample realizations" definition is presented. Another section briefly describes identification, latent variable indeterminancy, and other properties common to models with latent variables. The paper then reviews the role of latent variables in multiple regression, probit and logistic regression, factor analysis, latent curve models, item response theory, latent class analysis, and structural equation models. Though…

• UO
  University of California, San Diego
• NI
  National Institute on Drug Abuse