LVMM is similar to model-based clustering in that the user has to choose a distribution for the data. Other mixture distributions in addition to the multivariate normal can be chosen to account for the type of data (e.g. mixtures of Poisson distributions for count data such as number of cigarettes per day). LVMM is a combination of structural equation modeling and latent class analysis. For technical details concerning LVMMs, the reader is referred to the online Supplementary material.
