I discuss the recommendations and cautions in Steinley and Brusco's (2011) article on the use of finite models to cluster a data set. In their article, much use is made of comparison with the "K"-means procedure. As noted by researchers for over 30 years, the "K"-means procedure can be viewed as a special case of finite mixture modeling in which…

McLachlan (2011) and Vermunt (2011) each provided thoughtful replies to our original article (Steinley & Brusco, 2011). This response serves to incorporate some of their comments while simultaneously clarifying our position. We argue that greater caution against overparamaterization must be taken when assuming that clusters are highly elliptical…

When data are collected via anonymous Internet surveys, particularly under conditions of obligatory participation (such as with student samples), data quality can be a concern. However, little guidance exists in the published literature regarding techniques for detecting careless responses. Previously several potential approaches have been…