Longitudinal Data Analysis for the Behavioral Sciences Using R
- Jeffrey D. Long - University of Iowa, USA
This book is unique in its focus on showing students in the behavioral sciences how to analyze longitudinal data using R software. The book focuses on application, making it practical and accessible to students in psychology, education, and related fields, who have a basic foundation in statistics. It provides explicit instructions in R computer programming throughout the book, showing students exactly how a specific analysis is carried out and how output is interpreted.
"This text excels in the explanation of models with the side-by-side use of R, so the audience can see the models in action. There is a gentle coverage of the mathematics driving the models, which does not seem intimidating to a non technical audience."—William Anderson, Cornell University
This is an excellant text and features within our course- many of our students have purchsed this.
On the recommendation list for the upcoming semester.
I recommend this as supplemental reading for postgraduate students. It is readable text on relatively complex statistics. The R focus is especially useful
If Maximum Likelihood Estimation is part of your Syllabus, Chapter 6 of this book should be one of your recommended readings. It is the most clear explanation of ML I ever seen! Practical examples using R are an extraordinary pedagogical tool to facilitate student's comprehension of the process involved in this estimation procedure.
Chapter 4, \Graphing Longitudinal Data" is highly recommended too!
This books has very powerful pedagogical tools for a complex topic.
I am currently trying to introduce this text to my course this spring, though I am getting some resistance. I'm finding that most of my students are not familiar enough with R and I can't devote enough class time to help them learn R AND learn about growth modeling. At least for now, considering how the course is structured, I plan to use it as a supplemental text.
I would definitely recommend this book as part of the longitudinal session during my Advanced Survey Methods module.
This textbook is one of the only textbooks on longitudinal data analysis that incorporates R, which is a bonus. However, if one is using it as a textbook for a course, there are no end of chapter exercises in the textbook. Additionally, the authors use the same data set for the entire book. More data sets that could be used both in examples in the book and on homework exercises would be beneficial.
Unfortunately, SPSS ist the statistical software of choice at the department, so this book is too advanced to introduce R and the longitudinal analysis at the same time.
This did not fit my requirements
This book is excellent, but the selection of methods presented was not broad enough to be used in the course I had planned. I might use chapters of it as the text is extremely well written, but as a general introduction to longitudinal analysis in epidemiology it is not was I was looking for: The chapters on estimation and testing would be a bit tangential for my course, and I lacked something more on time to even data.
