Change is constant in everyday life. Infants crawl and then walk, children learn to read and write, teenagers mature in myriad ways, the elderly become frail and forgetful. In addition to these natural changes, targeted interventions may cause change: cholesterol levels may decline as a result of a new medication, exam grades may rise following completion of a coaching class. By measuring and charting changes like these - both naturalistic and experimentally induced - researchers uncover the temporal nature of development. The investigation of change has fascinated empirical researchers for generations, and to do it well, they must have longitudinal data.
Applied Longitudinal Data Analysis is a much-needed professional book that will instruct readers in the many new methodologies now at their disposal to make the best use of longitudinal data, including both individual growth modelling and survival analysis. Throughout the chapters, the authors employ many cases and examples from a variety of disciplines, covering multilevel models, curvilinear and discontinuous change, in addition to discrete-time hazard models, continuous-time event occurrence, and Cox regression models. Applied Longitudinal Data Analysis is a unique contribution to the literature on research methods and will be useful to a wide range of behavioural and social science researchers.
PART I; 1. A framework for investigating change over time; 2. Exploring Longitudinal Data on Change; 3. Introducing the multilevel model for change; 4. Doing data analysis with the multilevel mode for change; 5. Treating TIME more flexibly; 6. Modelling discontinuous and nonlinear change; 7. Examining the multilevel model's error covariance structure; 8. Modelling change using covariance structure analysis; PART II; 9. A Framework for Investigating Event Occurrence; 10. Describing discrete-time event occurrence data; 11. Fitting basic Discrete-Time Hazard Models; 12. Extending the Discrete-Time Hazard Model; 13. Describing Continuous-Time Event Occurrence Data; 14. Fitting Cox Regression Models; 15. Extending the Cox Regression Model
"The book begins with an excellent introduction to the types of questions that might be answered by a longitudinal study...After a chapter with sensible suggestions for exploratory analysis... --Statistics in Medicine Review
"It will come as no surprise to those familiar with Judith Singer and John Willett's didactic journal articles to learn that they have written a terrific textbook on longitudinal data analysis." --Social Methods and Research
"Anyone teaching courses on the analysis of repeated measures data or on the analysis of survival data in the social sciences will find this book extremely helpful. It is thorough, well written and the associated web site (www.oup-usa.org/alda) provides useful back-up material in the form of datasets used in the book..." --Centre for Multilevel Modelling
"This book...will certainly have a substantial impact on the analyses of longitudinal data carried out in many fields." --International Epidemiological Association
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