ABSTRACT
This chapter serves as a conceptual orientation to confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) in a longitudinal context (longitudinal confirmatory factor analysis, LCFA) and how a LCFA can be extended to a second-order growth curve model (also known as a curve-of-factors model, or CFM). This CFA-to-CFM model-building process is presented in an incremental manner with several steps: (1) an introduction to CFAs, (2) a discussion of LCFA, and (3) an explanation of how a LCFA can be conceptualized as the measurement part of a second-order growth curve model (a CFM). Steps 1 and 2 refer to the confirmatory factor model with first-order primary latent factors. Step 3 introduces the addition of second-order latent growth factors to the LCFA model to form a second-order latent growth curve model (or CFM). The chapter also discusses the useful features of a CFM over a conventional latent growth curve model (LGCM).
