Child Development
Volume 88, Issue 4 p. 1186-1206
Review

On the Practical Interpretability of Cross-Lagged Panel Models: Rethinking a Developmental Workhorse

Daniel Berry, 

Corresponding Author

Daniel Berry

University of Minnesota

Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Daniel Berry, Institute of Child Development University of Minnesota, Twin Cities 51 E River Road Minneapolis, MN 55455. Electronic mail may be sent to [email protected].Search for more papers by this author
Michael T. Willoughby, 

Michael T. Willoughby

RTI International

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First published: 23 November 2016
https://doi.org/10.1111/cdev.12660
Citations: 444
This research was supported by a grant from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (1PO1HD39667 and 2PO1HD039667). Cofunding was provided by the National Institute of Drug Abuse, the NIH Office of Minority Health, the NIH Office of the Director, the National Center on Minority Health and Health Disparities, and the Office of Behavioral and Social Sciences Research. We offer our sincere gratitude to all of the families and children who participated in this research as well as the investigators of the Family Life Project, the Fragile Families and Child Well-Being Study, and the authors of the Lansford et al. ( 2011) article cited herein. Their thoughtful design and stewardship of these landmark studies made the present article possible.

Abstract

Reciprocal feedback processes between experience and development are central to contemporary developmental theory. Autoregressive cross-lagged panel (ARCL) models represent a common analytic approach intended to test such dynamics. The authors demonstrate that—despite the ARCL model's intuitive appeal—it typically (a) fails to align with the theoretical processes that it is intended to test and (b) yields estimates that are difficult to interpret meaningfully. Specifically, using a Monte Carlo simulation and two empirical examples concerning the reciprocal relation between spanking and child aggression, it is shown that the cross-lagged estimates derived from the ARCL model reflect a weighted—and typically uninterpretable—amalgam of between- and within-person associations. The authors highlight one readily implemented respecification that better addresses these multiple levels of inference.