Longitudinal Model Building Using Latent Transition Analysis: An Example Using School Bullying Data

Abstract

Since the early 1990s, latent transition analysis (LTA; Collins and Wugalter, ) has received more attention among researchers as an effective statistical analytic tool for a person-centered approach using longitudinal data (Bye and Schechter, ; Collins and Wugalter, ; Bergman and Magnusson, ; Masyn, ). However, model building in LTA has often been subjective, which is confusing for applied researchers regarding which procedures to follow, which results to report, and how to interpret the validity of their solution. It is important to examine why and where such subjectivity occurs and to discus