Latent growth modeling

Latent growth modeling is a statistical technique used in the structural equation modeling (SEM) framework to estimate growth trajectories. It is a longitudinal analysis technique to estimate growth over a period of time. It is widely used in the social sciences, including psychology and education. It is also called latent growth curve analysis. The latent growth model was derived from theories of SEM. General purpose SEM software, such as OpenMx, lavaan (both open source packages based in R), AMOS, Mplus, LISREL, or EQS among others may be used to estimate growth trajectories.