What Your Data Didn't Tell You the First Time Around: Advanced Analytic Approaches to Longitudinal Analyses

The present article describes the gap that exists between traditional data analysis techniques and more sophisticated methods that tend to be used more commonly among researchers outside of the study of v iolence against women. We briefly characterize growth models and person-centered analyses and describe the growing body of work in v iolence research that has applied these methods. Through an example from our own application of one of these techniques-latent class growth analysis-we highlight the ways that v iolence against women researchers may benefit from applying these more sophisticated methods to their own data, both past and present.