On March 20th, at the invitation of the Department of Educational Psychology, Zhonglin Wen, the professor of psychometrics at South China Normal University, came to our school and brought a lecture on Latent class analysis (LCA) and latent transition analysis (LTA). The lecture was hosted by Xin Gu, the Zijiang Young Scholar of the Department of Educational Psychology.

Professor Wen first introduced the application of LCA by using the example of Big Five Personality Traits and the Enneagram. Then,  combining with a large number of easy-to-understand examples, Dr. Wen explained the preparatory probability knowledge needed for LCA and LTA. On this basis, Professor Wen detailed the process of  LCA and LTA, and demonstrated the actual analysis steps in the Mplus software.

During the lecture, Dr. Wen and the students had an in-depth exchange on key issues，such as the definition of LCA and LTA models and parameters, and the interpretation of analysis results. There were many students having a heated discussion with Professor Wen  after the lecture.