Technical comment on Tan, Y., Li, Q., Wang, X., Van den Bergh, O., & Qiu, J. (2026). Cognitive emotion regulation profiles and mental health: A latent profile analysis among university students under acute pandemic stress. Personality and Individual Differences, 262, 113982

Abstract

Tan et al. (2026) used latent profile analysis (LPA) to identify three cognitive emotion regulation profiles and subsequently compared mental health outcomes across profiles. The study provides an informative person-centred perspective; however, two methodological issues warrant consideration. First, the reported selection of the three-profile solution appears insufficiently supported because the four- and five-profile models showed significant bootstrap likelihood ratio tests and lower information criteria, while the three-profile solution was primarily favoured because the Lo-Mendell-Rubin test became nonsignificant for four profiles. Second, subsequent MANOVA treated profile membership as an observed grouping variable without accounting for classification uncertainty inherent in LPA. These issues may affect both the selected profile structure and the estimated differences in mental health outcomes. We suggest greater reliance on a comprehensive model-enumeration strategy and classification error-corrected procedures for distal outcomes.