Abstract
Growth curve models are often used to investigate growth and change phenomena in social, behavioral, and educational sciences and are one of the fundamental tools for dealing with longitudinal data. Many studies have demonstrated that normally distributed data in practice are rather an exception, especially when data are collected longitudinally. Estimating a model without considering the nonnormality of data may lead to inefficient or even incorrect parameter estimates, or misleading statistical inferences. Therefore, robust methods become important in growth curve modeling. Among the existing robust methods, the two-stage robust approach from the frequentist perspective and the semiparametric Bayesian approach from the Bayesian perspective are promising. We propose to use these two approaches for growth curve modeling when the nonnormality is suspected. An example about the development of mathematical abilities is used to illustrate the application of the two approaches, using school children’s Peabody Individual Achievement Test mathematical test scores from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997 Cohort.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Bureau of Labor Statistics, U.S. Department of Labor. (2005). National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997 cohort, 1997–2003 (rounds 1–7) [computer file]. OSU, Produced by the National Opinion Research Center, the University of Chicago and distributed by the Center for Human Resource Research, The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio.
Ferguson, T. (1973) A bayesian analysis of some nonparametric problems. The Annals of Statistics, 1, 209–230.
Ferguson, T. (1974) Prior distributions on spaces of probability measures. The Annals of Statistics, 2, 615–629.
Filzmoser, P. (2005) Identification of multivariate outliers: A performance study. Austrian Journal of Statistics, 34, 127–138.
Hampel, F. R., Ronchetti, E. M., Rousseeuw, P. J., & Stahel, W. A. (1986) Robust statistics: The approach based on influence functions. New York: Wiley.
Hardin, J., & Rocke, D. M. (2005) The distribution of robust distances. Journal of Computational and Graphical Statistics, 14, 928–946.
Huber, P. J. (1981) Robust statistics. New York: Wiley.
Ishwaran, H. (2000) Inference for the random effects in bayesian generalized linear mixed models. In American Statistical Association, (ed.), ASA Proceedings of the Bayesian Statistical Science Section (pp. 1–10).
Lange, K. L., Little, R. J. A., & Taylor, J. M. G. (1989) Robust statistical modeling uisng the t distribution. Journal of the Americal Statistical Association, 84(408), 881–896.
Lunn, D., Jackson, C., Best, N., Thomas, A., & Spiegelhalter, D. (2013) The BUGS book: AÂ practical introduction to Bayesian analysis. Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press.
Maronna, R. A., Martin, R. D., & Yohai, V. J. (2006) Robust statistics: Theory and methods. New York: Wiley.
McArdle, J. J. (1988) Dynamic but structural equation modeling of repeated measures data. In J. R. Nesselroade, & R. B. Cattell, (eds.), Handbook of Multivariate Experimental Psychology (2nd ed., pp. 561–614). New York: Plenum Press.
Meredith, W., & Tisak, J. (1990) Latent curve analysis. Psychometrika, 55, 107–122.
Micceri, T. (1989) The unicorn, the normal curve, and other improbable creatures. Psychological Bulletin, 105(1), 156–166.
Müller, P., & Quintana, F. A. (2004) Nonparametric bayesian data analysis. Statistical Science, 19, 95–110.
Muthén, B., & Shedden, K. (1999) Finite mixture modeling with mixture outcomes using the em algorithm. Biometrics, 55(2), 463–469.
Peña, D., & Prieto, F. J. (2001) Multivariate outlier detection and robust covariance matrix estimation (with discussion). Technometrics, 43, 286–310.
Pendergast, J. F., & Broffitt, J. D. (1985) Robust estimation in growth curve models. Communications in Statistics: Theory and Methods, 14, 1919–1939.
Pinheiro, J. C., Liu, C., & Wu, Y. N. (2001) Efficient algorithms for robust estimation in linear mixed-effects models using the multivariate t distribution. Journal of Computational and Graphical Statistics, 10(2), 249–276.
Sethuraman, J. (1994) A constructive definition of dirichlet priors. Statistica Sinica, 4, 639–650.
Silvapulle, M. J. (1992) On m-methods in growth curve analysis with asymmetric errors. Journal of Statistical Planning and Inference, 32(3), 303–309.
Singer, J. M., & Sen, P. K. (1986) M-methods in growth curve analysis. Journal of Statistical Planning and Inference, 13, 251–261.
Tong, X. (2014) Robust semiparametric bayesian methods in growth curve modeling. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame.
Tong, X., & Zhang, Z. (2012) Diagnostics of robust growth curve modeling using student’s t distribution. Multivariate Behavioral Research, 47, 493–518.
Yuan, K.-H., & Bentler, P. M. (1998) Structural equation modeling with robust covariances. Sociological Methodology, 28, 363–396.
Yuan, K.-H., & Bentler, P. M. (2001) Effect of outliers on estimators and tests in covariance structure analysis. British Journal of Mathematical and Statistical Psychology, 54, 161–175.
Yuan, K.-H., Bentler, P. M., & Chan, W. (2004) Structural equation modeling with heavy tailed distributions. Psychometrika, 69, 421—436.
Yuan, K.-H., & Zhang, Z. (2012a) Structural equation modeling diagnostics using r package semdiag and eqs. Structural Equation Modeling, 19, 683–702.
Yuan, K.-H., & Zhang, Z. (2012b) Robust structural equation modeling with missing data and auxiliary variables. Psychometrika, 77, 803–826.
Zhang, Z., Davis, H. P., Salthouse, T. A., & Tucker-Drob, E. A. (2007) Correlates of individual, and age-related, differences in short-term learning. Learning and Individual Differences, 17(3), 231–240.
Zhang, Z., Lai, K., Lu, Z., & Tong, X. (2013) Bayesian inference and application of robust growth curve models using student’s t distribution. Structural Equation Modeling, 20, 47–78.
Zhong, X., & Yuan, K.-H. (2010) Weights. In N. J. Salkind (ed.), Encyclopedia of research design (pp. 1617–1620). Thousand Oaks: Sage.
Zhong, X., & Yuan, K.-H. (2011) Bias and efficiency in structural equation modeling: Maximum likelihood versus robust methods. Multivariate Behavioral Research, 46, 229–265.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2016 Springer International Publishing Switzerland
About this paper
Cite this paper
Tong, X., Ke, Z. (2016). Growth Curve Modeling for Nonnormal Data: A Two-Stage Robust Approach Versus a Semiparametric Bayesian Approach. In: van der Ark, L., Bolt, D., Wang, WC., Douglas, J., Wiberg, M. (eds) Quantitative Psychology Research. Springer Proceedings in Mathematics & Statistics, vol 167. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-38759-8_17
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-38759-8_17
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-38757-4
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-38759-8
eBook Packages: Mathematics and StatisticsMathematics and Statistics (R0)