Reporting Growth Modeling Results of Aggression: Key Insights for Meta-Analyzing Change

Over the past two decades, growth modeling analysis (GMA) has become crucial in studying developmental changes in adolescent aggressive behavior. GMA uniquely captures both individual change and group differences over time, making it well-suited to track how adolescent aggression emerges, stabilizes, or declines during a key developmental period. Nonetheless, systematic reviews of GMA studies on aggression development have been limited to narrative reviews and summaries, with no meta-analysis focusing on change parameters, i.e. slope coefficients. This substantial oversight leaves the benefits of meta-analysis untapped for understanding typical and atypical development found in GMA studies. One reason for the lack of meta-analyses might be insufficient reporting conventions in GMA research. To examine this, the current study investigates current reporting practices in GMA research by reviewing 41 studies that model change in adolescent aggressive behavior problems. Results reveal a notable deficiency in reporting GMA information useful for meta-analysis. In response to these findings, we offer recommendations to improve reporting practices and suggest strategies to enable meta-analytic synthesis despite current limitations. Developing meta-analytic methods tailored to GMA growth parameters is urgently needed.