Chapter 25: Modeling Individual Change over Time

Suzanne E. Graham & Judith D. Singer & John B. Willett

Modeling individual change over time Researchers in psychology often ask questions about both individual change over time, and about how change is related to critical features of the developing individuals, such as the way they have been treated, their social and educational background, and so on. Despite decades in which it was believed that individual change could not be measured well (Cronbach and Furby, 1970), methodologists working within a variety of different disciplines have now developed a class of statistical methods that permit the effective investigation of individual change. These methods are referred to variously as individual growth modeling, random coefficient modeling, multilevel modeling, mixed modeling, and hierarchical linear modeling. All the new methods arose out of a common intellectual core and their effective application requires multiple waves of truly longitudinal data (Rogosa, Brandt, and Zimowski, 1982; Willett 1988). In this chapter, we describe how an important statistical model – ...

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