We propose a causal analysis of the mother’s educational level on the health status of the newborn, in terms of gestational weeks and weight. The analysis is based on a finite mixture structural equation model, the parameters of which have a causal interpretation. The model is applied to a...

A class of Item Response Theory (IRT) models for binary and ordinal polytomous items is illustrated and an R package for dealing with these models, named MultiLCIRT, is described. The models at issue extend traditional IRT models allowing for multidimensionality and discreteness of latent...

A relevant problem in applications of Item Response Theory (IRT) models is due to non- ignorable missing responses. We propose a multidimensional latent class IRT model for binary items in which the missingness mechanism is driven by a latent variable (propensity to answer) correlated with the...

type="main" xml:id="rssc12030-abs-0001" <title type="main">Summary</title> <p>Motivated by an application to a longitudinal data set coming from the Health and Retirement Study about self-reported health status, we propose a model for longitudinal data which is based on a latent process to account for the unobserved...</p>

We propose a finite mixture latent trajectory model to study the behavior of firms in terms of open-ended employment contracts that are activated and terminated during a certain period. The model is based on the assumption that the population of firms is composed by unobservable clusters (or...

Objectives We investigate about the differences in birthweight between firstand second-borns, evaluating the impact of changes in pregnancy (e.g., gestational age), demographic (e.g., age), and social (e.g., education level, marital status) maternal characteristics. Data and Methods All analyses...