A Realistic Perspective on Pattern Representation in Growth Data: Comment on Bauer and Curran (2003)

• Published in: Psychological methods 2003-09, Vol.8 (3), p.378-383
• Main Authors: Cudeck, Robert, Henly, Susan J
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Biological and medical sciences; Body Height; Child; Female; Frequency Distribution; Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology; Human; Humans; Male; Models, Psychological; Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry; Psychology. Psychophysiology; Psychometrics. Statistics. Methodology; Statistical Analysis; Statistical Estimation; Statistics. Mathematics
• ISSN: 1082-989X; 1939-1463
• DOI: 10.1037/1082-989X.8.3.378

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.