We adopted a cohort-sequential approach to the analysis of the multiple risk assessments. This provides a way to link adjacent segments of our three-wave longitudinal data, using responses from the different age cohorts to determine the existence of a common developmental trend or growth curve, which can be profiled over the full age range. Under this analytic approach, each cohort has a different pattern of intentional attrition, or “planned missing data.” Simultaneous analysis of each cohort with a related growth model makes it possible to build the complete curve using information from all ages simultaneously (Muthén & Muthén, 1998–2011; Preacher, Wichman, MacCallum, & Briggs, 2008). Thus, our “trajectory” analysis spanned a 14-year-period from age 16 to 29, using only 5 years of longitudinal data. This approach, providing more measurement points than waves, allows for estimation of nonlinear trajectory shapes, for the population profile, even though there are only three observations per individual.
