Estimating Rate of Change for Nonlinear Trajectories in the Framework of Individual Measurement Occasions: A New Perspective on Growth Curves

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Autori principali: Liu, Jin, Perera, Robert A.
Natura: Preprint
Pubblicazione: 2022
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author Liu, Jin
Perera, Robert A.
author_facet Liu, Jin
Perera, Robert A.
contents Researchers are often interested in examining between-individual differences in within-individual processes. If the process under investigation is tracked for a long time, its trajectory may show a certain degree of nonlinearity, so that the rate-of-change is not constant. A fundamental goal of modeling such nonlinear processes is to estimate model parameters that reflect meaningful aspects of change, including the parameters related to change and other parameters that shed light on substantive hypotheses. However, if the measurement occasion is unstructured, existing models cannot simultaneously estimate these two types of parameters. This article has three goals. First, we view the change over time as the area under the curve (AUC) of the rate-of-change versus time (r-t) graph. Second, using the instantaneous rate-of-change midway through a time interval to approximate the average rate-of-change during that interval, we propose a new specification to describe longitudinal processes. In addition to obtaining the individual change-related parameters and other parameters related to specific research questions, the new specification allows for unequally-space study waves and individual measurement occasions around each wave. Third, we derive the model-based interval-specific change and change-from-baseline, two common measures to evaluate change over time. We evaluate the proposed specification through a simulation study and a real-world data analysis. We also provide OpenMx and Mplus 8 code for each model with the novel specification.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2201_00470
institution arXiv
publishDate 2022
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Estimating Rate of Change for Nonlinear Trajectories in the Framework of Individual Measurement Occasions: A New Perspective on Growth Curves
Liu, Jin
Perera, Robert A.
Methodology
Researchers are often interested in examining between-individual differences in within-individual processes. If the process under investigation is tracked for a long time, its trajectory may show a certain degree of nonlinearity, so that the rate-of-change is not constant. A fundamental goal of modeling such nonlinear processes is to estimate model parameters that reflect meaningful aspects of change, including the parameters related to change and other parameters that shed light on substantive hypotheses. However, if the measurement occasion is unstructured, existing models cannot simultaneously estimate these two types of parameters. This article has three goals. First, we view the change over time as the area under the curve (AUC) of the rate-of-change versus time (r-t) graph. Second, using the instantaneous rate-of-change midway through a time interval to approximate the average rate-of-change during that interval, we propose a new specification to describe longitudinal processes. In addition to obtaining the individual change-related parameters and other parameters related to specific research questions, the new specification allows for unequally-space study waves and individual measurement occasions around each wave. Third, we derive the model-based interval-specific change and change-from-baseline, two common measures to evaluate change over time. We evaluate the proposed specification through a simulation study and a real-world data analysis. We also provide OpenMx and Mplus 8 code for each model with the novel specification.
title Estimating Rate of Change for Nonlinear Trajectories in the Framework of Individual Measurement Occasions: A New Perspective on Growth Curves
topic Methodology
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2201.00470