ABSTRACT
Over the years that I (DK) have been at the University of Delaware, I have been fortunate to collaborate with Dick Venezky. Our most recent collaboration, along with the second author (XU-Z), was on an OECD-sponsored longitudinal study of instructional and computing technology (ICT). The expertise that I was able to bring to bear on this problem focused on estimating change over time in ICT skills, and the methodologies I had to offer to the project seemed to fit nicely into the general questions that Dick was addressing. Indeed, Dick seemed quite intrigued by the power of modern methodologies for the study of change. So this chapter is a gift to Dick, providing a didactic overview of classical and modern methodologies for the study of change, highlighting the historical trends that led to the development of these methods. The history and methods described in this chapter are drawn from the fields of statistics, psychometrics, econometrics, and sociology—disciplines that have contributed separately and together in developing methodologies for the analysis of change. Applications of these methods to problems in the social sciences will be provided. Finally, we consider new issues and problems that beset all of the models discussed in this chapter, laying the groundwork for future research in the study of change.
