An introduction to latent growth curve modeling

Over the past 3 decades we have witnessed an increase in the complexity of theoretical models that attempt to explain development in a number of behavioral domains. The conceptual movement to examine behavior from both developmental and contextual perspectives parallels recent methodological advances in the analysis of change. These new analysis techniques have fundamentally altered how we conceptualize and study change, and have prompted researchers to identify larger frameworks to integrate knowledge. One such framework is latent growth modeling. This article presents a basic latent growth modeling approach for analyzing repeated measures data and delineates several of its extensions, including analyses for multiple populations, accelerated designs, multivariate associative models, and a framework for sample size selection and power estimation.