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. Beyond these natural processes and events, external
forces and interventions instigate and disrupt change: test scores may rise after a coaching course, drug abusers
may remain abstinent after residential treatment. By charting changes over time and investigating whether and when
events occur, researchers reveal the temporal rhythms of our lives.
Applied Longitudinal Data Analysis is a much-needed professional book for empirical researchers and graduate students
in the behavioral, social, and biomedical sciences. It offers the first accessible in-depth presentation of two
of today's most popular statistical methods: multilevel models for individual change and hazard/survival models
for event occurrence (in both discrete- and continuous-time). Using clear, concise prose and real data sets from
published studies, the authors take you step by step through complete analyses, from simple exploratory displays
that reveal underlying patterns through sophisticated specifications of complex statistical models.
Applied Longitudinal Data Analysis offers readers a private consultation session with internationally recognized
experts and represents a unique contribution to the literature on quantitative empirical methods.