Applications of latent trait and latent class models in the social sciences

In educational, psychological, and sociological research, it becomes more and more a standard to analyze empirical data by introducing latent variables. Latent variables are theoretical constructs that are invented to take account of contingencies among observed variables. They are to explain these contingencies. This volume provides a collection of about 40 applications of latent variable models in different fields of social science research, i. e., in educational asessment, cognitive and personality psychology, social surveys of life satisfication, deviant behavior and social attitudes, and in epidemiological and longitudinal studies. Outstanding researchers developing those statistical models contributed to the book with their favorized applications as did researchers from substantial disciplines with the results of their projects. In order to keep the applied chapters as far possible free from mathematical presentations of the statistical models used, an introductory chapter provides a guide through the world of latent structure models that form the basis of this book. In this guide the differences and relations of various models are outlined and references to those chapters are given that provide applications of the models under consideration. The book is addresses to graduate students and applied researchers who are planing to apply those models in their own research or who just want to know what this kind of statistical analysis is good for.