title: Teacher's Corner: Latent Curve Models and Latent Change Score Models Estimated in R.
abstract: In recent years the use of the Latent Curve Model (LCM) among researchers in social sciences has increased noticeably, probably thanks to contemporary software developments and to the availability of specialized literature. Extensions of the LCM, like the the Latent Change Score Model (LCSM), have also increased in popularity. At the same time, the R statistical language and environment, which is open source and runs on several operating systems, is becoming a leading software for applied statistics. We show how to estimate both the LCM and LCSM with the sem, lavaan, and OpenMx packages of the R software. We also illustrate how to read in, summarize, and plot data prior to analyses. Examples are provided on data previously illustrated by Ferrer, Hamagami, & McArdle, 2004. The data and all scripts used here are available on the first author's website.
authors.affiliation: Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences, University of Geneva, Switzerland, Distance Learning University, Sierre, Switzerland, 4136 UniMail, Boulevard du Pont d'Arve 40, 1211 Geneva, Switzerland, paolo.ghisletta@unige.ch.
authors.forename: Paolo
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Ghisletta
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Southern California, USA 3620 South McClintock Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90089-1061 jmcardle@usc.edu.
authors.forename: John J
authors.initials: JJ
authors.lastname: McArdle