Class Enumeration and Parameter Recovery of Growth Mixture Modeling and Second-Order Growth Mixture Modeling in the Presence of Measurement Noninvariance between Latent Classes

Population heterogeneity in growth trajectories can be detected with growth mixture modeling (GMM). It is common that researchers compute composite scores of repeated measures and use them as multiple indicators of growth factors (baseline performance and growth) assuming measurement invariance between latent classes. Considering that the assumption of measurement invariance does not always hold, we investigate the impact of measurement noninvariance on class enumeration and parameter recovery in GMM through a Monte Carlo simulation study (Study 1). In Study 2, we examine the class enumeration and parameter recovery of the second-order growth mixture modeling (SOGMM) that incorporates measurement models at the first order level. Thus, SOGMM estimates growth trajectory parameters with reliable sources of variance, that is, common factor variance of repeated measures and allows heterogeneity in measurement parameters between latent classes. The class enumeration rates are examined with information criteria such as AIC, BIC, sample-size adjusted BIC, and hierarchical BIC under various simulation conditions. The results of Study 1 showed that the parameter estimates of baseline performance and growth factor means were biased to the degree of measurement noninvariance even when the correct number of latent classes was extracted. In Study 2, the class enumeration accuracy of SOGMM depended on information criteria, class separation, and sample size. The estimates of baseline performance and growth factor mean differences between classes were generally unbiased but the size of measurement noninvariance was underestimated. Overall, SOGMM is advantageous in that it yields unbiased estimates of growth trajectory parameters and more accurate class enumeration compared to GMM by incorporating measurement models.