How does Latent GOLD differ from the LEM program?
Latent GOLD® implements the 3 most important types of latent class (LC) models. It was designed to be extremely easy to use and to make it possible for people without a strong statistical background to apply LC analysis to their own data in a safe and easy way. LEM is a command language research tool that Prof. Jeroen Vermunt developed for applied researchers with a strong statistical background who want to apply nonstandard log-linear and latent class models to their categorical data. With LEM you can specify more probability structures with many more kinds of restrictions (if you know how to do it), but is not designed to be Windows friendly, requires strict data and input formats and does not provide error checks. With Latent GOLD, continuous and count variables can be included in the model, and special LC output not available in LEM is provided, such as various graphs, classification statistics, and bivariate residuals. Latent GOLD® also has faster (full Newton-Raphson) and safer (
