Known Class Indicator
This feature allows more control over the segment definitions by pre-assigning selected cases (not) to be in a particular class or classes.
For more information, see Tutorial #5: Using Latent GOLD 4.5 with the Known Class Option . In this tutorial, we illustrate the use of the 鈥榢nown class' feature in Latent GOLD 4.5 to take into account additional information on a subset of cases which allows us to classify them into a particular class with probability one. In this case, the information comes from a physician's diagnosis of the patient as 鈥楧epressed' or merely 鈥楾roubled', corresponding to 2 of the 3 latent classes.
Conditional Bootstrap p-value Model difference bootstrap can be used to formally assess the significance in improvement associated with adding additional classes, additional DFactors and/or an additional DFactor levels to the model, or to relax any other model restriction.
Overdispersed (Count and Binomial Count in Regression) Overdispersion is a common phenomenon in count data. It means that, as a result of unobserved heterogeneity, the variance of the count variable is larger than estimated by the Poisson (binomial) model. The overdispersed option makes it possible to account for unobserved heterogeneity by assuming that the rates (success probabilities) follow a gamma (beta) distribution. This yields a negative-binomial model for overdispersed Poisson counts and a negative-binomial model for overdispersed binomial counts. Note that this option is conceptually similar to including a normally distributed random intercept in a regression model for a count variable.
The overdispersion option is useful if one wishes to analyze count data using mixture or zero-inflated variants of (truncated) negative-binomial or beta-binomial models (Agresti, 2000; Long, 1997; Simonoff, 2003). The negative-binomial model is a Poisson model with an extra error term coming from a gamma distribution. The beta-binomial model is a variant of the binomial count model that assumes that the success probabilities come from a beta distribution. These models are common in fields such as criminology, political sciences, medicine, biology, and marketing. |