Group-Based Modeling of Development

by Daniel S. Nagin

Overview

This book provides a systematic exposition of a group-based statistical method for analyzing longitudinal data in the social and behavioral sciences and in medicine. The methods can be applied to a wide range of data, such as that describing the progression of delinquency and criminality over the life course, changes in income over time, the course of a disease or physiological condition, or the evolution of the socioeconomic status of communities. Using real-world research data from longitudinal studies, the book explains and applies this method for identifying distinctive time-based progressions called developmental trajectories. Rather than assuming the existence of developmental trajectories of a specific form before statistical data analysis begins, the method allows the trajectories to emerge from the data itself. Thus, in an analysis of data on Montreal school children, it teases apart four distinct trajectories of physical aggression over the ages 6 to 15, examines predictors of these trajectories, and identifies events that may alter the trajectories.

Aimed at consumers of statistical methodology, including social scientists, criminologists, psychologists, and medical researchers, the book presents the statistical theory underlying the method with a mixture of intuition and technical development.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780674016866
Publisher:	Harvard University Press
Publication date:	04/25/2005
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	214
Product dimensions:	6.12(w) x 9.25(h) x 0.85(d)

About the Author

Daniel S. Nagin is Teresa and H. John Heinz III University Professor of Public Policy and Statistics, Carnegie Mellon University.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments

1. Introduction and Rationale

PART I. LAYING OUT THE BASIC MODEL

2. The Basic Model

3. Groups as an Approximation

4. Model Selection

5. Posterior Group-Membership Probabilities

PART II. GENERALIZING THE BASIC MODEL

6. Statistically Linking Group Membership to Covariates

7. Adding Covariates to the Trajectories Themselves

8. Dual Trajectory Analysis

9. Concluding Observations

References

Index

What People are Saying About This

Daniel Nagin's work on developmental trajectories represents a fundamental component of modern thinking about delinquency. Further, as a paradigm for behavior modeling, his approach has great potential throughout the social sciences. This is an important book.

Steven Durlauf

Daniel Nagin's work on developmental trajectories represents a fundamental component of modern thinking about delinquency. Further, as a paradigm for behavior modeling, his approach has great potential throughout the social sciences. This is an important book.
— Steven Durlauf, University of Wisconsin-Madison

D. Wayne Osgood

Nagin's book provides a thorough and accessible treatment of the statistical method for analyzing longitudinal data to which he has contributed so much in the last decade. The hallmark of this method is its identification of a set of distinct trajectories of change over time in order to capture a sample's diversity in patterns of development. Nagin and his colleagues have applied, refined, and extended this approach over the past decade and this book is the culmination that brings it all together.
— D. Wayne Osgood, The Pennsylvania State University

Editorial Reviews

Nagin's book provides a thorough and accessible treatment of the statistical method for analyzing longitudinal data to which he has contributed so much in the last decade. The hallmark of this method is its identification of a set of distinct trajectories of change over time in order to capture a sample's diversity in patterns of development. Nagin and his colleagues have applied, refined, and extended this approach over the past decade and this book is the culmination that brings it all together.

D. Wayne Osgood

Daniel Nagin's work on developmental trajectories represents a fundamental component of modern thinking about delinquency. Further, as a paradigm for behavior modeling, his approach has great potential throughout the social sciences. This is an important book.

Steven Durlauf