Mplus Users Guide v6.. - Muthén & Muthén

CHAPTER 15CATEGORICALThe CATEGORICAL option is used to specify which dependentvariables are treated as binary or ordered categorical (ordinal) variablesin the model and its estimation. Ordered categorical dependent variablescannot have more than 10 categories. The number of categories isdetermined from the data. The CATEGORICAL option is specified asfollows:CATEGORICAL ARE u2 u3 u7-u13;where u2, u3, u7, u8, u9, u10, u11, u12, and u13 are binary or orderedcategorical dependent variables in the analysis.For categorical dependent variables, there are as many thresholds asthere are categories minus one. The thresholds are referred to in theMODEL command by adding to the variable name the dollar sign ($)followed by a number. The threshold for a binary variable u1 is referredto as u1$1. The two thresholds for a three-category variable u2 arereferred to as u2$1 and u2$2.The estimation of the model for binary or ordered categorical dependentvariables uses zero to denote the lowest category, one to denote thesecond lowest category, two to denote the third lowest category, etc. Ifthe variables are not coded this way in the data, they are automaticallyrecoded as described below. When data are saved for subsequentanalyses, the recoded categories are saved.Following are examples of situations in which data are recoded by theprogram:Categories in Original DataCategories in Recoded Data1 2 3 4 0 1 2 32 3 4 5 0 1 2 32 5 8 9 0 1 2 30 1 no recode needed1 2 0 1488