Latent Growth Models of Individual Change: The Case of Newcomer Adjustment

One commonality to various theoretical frameworks concerning employee work adjustment is change in employee-organization linkages over time, yet few empirical tests of employee work adjustment theories have adequately operationalized change. We develop and test a model of longitudinal change on one particular form of employee adjustment, employee attachment, operationalized in terms of O'Reilly and Chatman's (1986) triparite structure of commitment, using second-order factor (SOF) latent growth modeling (LGM). Results were generally supportive of the theoretical model and illustrate several advantages to using SOF LGM to measure longitudinal change. Copyright 2000 Academic Press.