title: Modeling stage-sequential change in ordered categorical responses.
abstract: Although few would dispute the usefulness of looking at behavioral change from a stage-sequential perspective, until recently the lack of appropriate modeling techniques has hampered rigorous empirical tests of stage theories. In particular, for behavioral measurements that are ordinal, there is a need for methods that represent the underlying change processes in the form of qualitative and discontinuous shifts. This article introduces a stage-sequential ordinal model by postulating that at any point in time there are a finite number of latent stages. Panel members may shift among these stages over time. The authors show that the stage-sequential model provides a general approach for both the analysis of ordinal time-dependent data and tests of various competing theories and hypotheses about psychological change processes. An analysis of a 5-year study concerning attitudes toward alcohol consumption by teenagers is presented to illustrate the modeling approach.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign 61820, USA. jskim@s.psych.uiuc.edu
authors.forename: J S
authors.initials: JS
authors.lastname: Kim
authors.forename: U
authors.initials: U
authors.lastname: Böckenholt
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000428:Alcohol Drinking / Q000523:psychology; D001290:Attitude; D001521:Behavior Therapy / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007604:Juvenile Delinquency / Q000523:psychology; D016013:Likelihood Functions; D008137:Longitudinal Studies; D008297:Male; D002189:Marijuana Abuse / Q000523:psychology; D015233:Models, Statistical; D011594:Psychometrics