Latent growth curve modeling (LGM)--a special case of confirmatory factor analysis designed to model change over time--is an indispensable and increasingly ubiquitous approach for modeling longitudinal data. This volume introduces LGM techniques to researchers, provides easy-to-follow, didactic examples of several common growth modeling approaches, and highlights recent advancements regarding the treatment of missing data, parameter estimation, and model fit.

The book covers the basic linear LGM, and builds from there to describe more complex functional forms (e.g., polynomial...