In empirical applications of structural equation modeling researchers often assume that the sample under investigation is homogeneous unless observed charateristics allow for a division of the sample into mutual exclusive homogenous subgroups. If such information is not available, unobserved heterogeneity can be taken into account by a finite-mixture approach (Arminger et al. (1998); Jedidi et al. (1997)). The simulation study presented in this paper reveals that this approach clearly outperforms a sequential procedure combining cluster and multigroup analysis.
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