Latent growth modeling
statistical technique
Latent growth modeling is a statistical technique used in the structural equation modeling (SEM) framework to estimate growth trajectories. It is a longitudinal analysis technique to estimate growth over a period of time. It is widely used in the social sciences, including psychology and education. It is also called latent growth curve analysis. The latent growth model was derived from theories of SEM. General purpose SEM software, such as OpenMx, lavaan (both open source packages based in R), AMOS, Mplus, LISREL, or EQS among others may be used to estimate growth trajectories.
Background
Latent Growth Models represent repeated measures of dependent variables as a function of time and other measures. Such longitudinal data share the features that the same subjects are observed repeatedly over time, and on the same tests (or parallel versions), and at known times. In latent growth modeling, the relative standing of an individual at each time is modeled as a function of an underlying growth process, with the best parameter values for that growth process being fitted to each individual.
These models have grown in use in social and behavioral research since it was shown that they can be fitted as a restricted common factor model in the structural equation modeling framework.
The methodology can be used to investigate systematic change, or growth, and inter-individual variability in this change.
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