Applied Longitudinal Data Analysis: Modeling Change and Event Occurrence

Rating:
Summary: Great if you really want to do longitudinal data analysis
Review: One of the great features of this book is that it is addressed to the empirical researcher and it really tells you how to conduct good data-analysis with longitudinal data. It doesn't push one particular piece of software, either, but uses a variety of different software packages. The book is really easy to read, and clearly explained -- and, there's so much in it!

Rating:
Summary: Absolutely wonderful!
Review: Singer and Willett is an absolutely wonderful book on longitudinal data analysis. It is divided into two main sections -- one on longitudinal analysis per se, and another on time-to-event, or survival analysis, models. The former is especially good on the basic setup and interpretation of multi-level statistical models.
This is a book for beginners in the sense that it emphasizes data analysis, rather than theory. But every statistician, and every user of statistics, can find something of value.
When I was only halfway through reading this book, I recommended it to my friends. Several of them have purchased a copy and are glad they did.
This is probably the most well-written statistics text I have ever read.

Rating:
Summary: The Bible for longitudinal analysis
Review: This book is, bar none, the best book on longitudinal analysis in social sciences.

The book has three outstanding features that make it the must-have for researchers who conduct longitudinal studies. First, the book has numerous examples that use data from real studies, collected by prominent scholars in this area. With the help of the accompanying website at UCLA, you will learn how to set up data files, which is crucial in longitudinal analysis. The sample codes and data files in SAS, SPSS, Stata, MLwiN, Mplus, HLM, and Splus will allow you to replicate the analyses. The authors use every effort to explain the results in plain, understandable language. They use a lot of graphs and tables to compare different nested models and help you to choose the one that best describes your data. It feels like you have an excellent tutor by your side when you are reading this book.

Second, the coverage of this book is comprehensive. Part I covers the regular growth curve modeling and multilevel modeling, with a few chapters dealing with time-varying covariates, discontinuous and nonlinear change. Part II covers discrete-time and continuous-time survival analysis. If you are conducting a longitudinal study, chances are you will find a technique in this book that suits you just right.

Third, the book is quite deep. Although it gears toward applications of different longitudinal analyses, it is no cakewalk. You need at least some background in multiple regression and multivariate statistics. I think the treatment of mathematics (both concepts and formulas) is just right. In some sections you may need to revisit them often in order to fully understand the subject.


Rating:
Summary: Best thing since sliced bread!
Review: This is a great book, it tells you in a straightforward way how to analyze your longitudinal data to answer questions of critical importance in the social sciences. It's not wedded to one particular piece of software, as many books on statistical topics are, but uses examples of real data and different software (HLM, MLwiN, SAS, Stata) to conduct the analyses. An absolute must for the researcher who collects longitudinal data.