the relation between dependence and other key variables (e.g., estimating the association between nicotine dependence and cessation, in which cessation is correlated with group membership like age (Johnson et al., 2008)). Measurement invariance may also obscure true associations, making them appear non-significant. Moreover, if a non-invariant measure is used as an inclusion criterion across groups, it might allow recruitment of groups that unintentionally differ on trait dependence because the same score may be differently related across groups to the underlying latent dependence (Robinson et al., 2006).
