Offers a treatment of modern applications of modelling and simulation in crop, livestock, forage/livestock systems, and field operations. The book discusses methodologies from linear programming and neutral networks, to expert or decision support systems, as well as featuring models, such as SOYGRO, CROPGRO and GOSSYM/COMAX. It includes coverage on evaporation and evapotranspiration, the theory of simulation based on biological processes, and deficit irrigation scheduling.

Multilevel Modeling Methods with Introductory and Advanced Applications provides a cogent and comprehensive introduction to the area of multilevel modeling for methodological and applied researchers as well as advanced graduate students. The book is designed to be able to serve as a textbook for a one or two semester course in multilevel modeling. The topics of the seventeen chapters range from basic to advanced, yet each chapter is designed to be able to stand alone as an instructional unit on its respective topic, with an emphasis on application and interpretation. In addition to covering foundational topics on the use of multilevel models for organizational and longitudinal research, the book includes chapters on more advanced extensions and applications, such as cross-classified random effects models, non-linear growth models, mixed effects location scale models, logistic, ordinal, and Poisson models, and multilevel mediation. In addition, the volume includes chapters addressing some of the most important design and analytic issues including missing data, power analyses, causal inference, model fit, and measurement issues. Finally, the volume includes chapters addressing special topics such as using large-scale complex sample datasets, and reporting the results of multilevel designs. Each chapter contains a section called Try This!, which poses a structured data problem for the reader. We have linked our book to a website (http://modeling.uconn.edu) containing data for the Try This! section, creating an opportunity for readers to learn by doing. The inclusion of the Try This! problems, data, and sample code eases the burden for instructors, who must continually search for class examples and homework problems. In addition, each chapter provides recommendations for additional methodological and applied readings.

This book is the first to introduce applied behavioral, social, and health sciences researchers to a new analytic method, the time-varying effect model (TVEM). It details how TVEM may be used to advance research on developmental and dynamic processes by examining how associations between variables change across time. The book describes how TVEM is a direct and intuitive extension of standard linear regression; whereas standard linear regression coefficients are static estimates that do not change with time, TVEM coefficients are allowed to change as continuous functions of real time, including developmental age, historical time, time of day, days since an event, and so forth. The book introduces readers to new research questions that can be addressed by applying TVEM in their research. Readers gain the practical skills necessary for specifying a wide variety of time-varying effect models, including those with continuous, binary, and count outcomes. The book presents technical details of TVEM estimation and three novel empirical studies focused on developmental questions using TVEM to estimate age-varying effects, historical shifts in behavior and attitudes, and real-time changes across days relative to an event. The volume provides a walkthrough of the process for conducting each of these studies, presenting decisions that were made, and offering sufficient detail so that readers may embark on similar studies in their own research. The book concludes with comments about additional uses of TVEM in applied research as well as software considerations and future directions. Throughout the book, proper interpretation of the output provided by TVEM is emphasized. Time-Varying Effect Modeling for the Behavioral, Social, and Health Sciences is an essential resource for researchers, clinicians/practitioners as well as graduate students in developmental psychology, public health, statistics and methodology for the social, behavioral, developmental, and public health sciences.

This book deals with models that can capture the behavior of individuals and groups over time. Organizationally, it is divided into three parts. Part I discusses the basic, decrement-only, life table and its associated stable population. Part II examines multistate (or increment-decrement) models and provides the first comprehensive treatment of those extremely flexible and useful life table models. Part III looks at "two-sex" models, which simultaneously incorporate the marriage or fertility behavior of males and females. Those models are explored more fully and completely here than has been the case to date, and the importance of including the experience of both sexes is demonstrated analytically as weil as empirically. In sum, this book considers a broad range of population models with a view to showing that such models can be eminently calculable, clearly interpretable, and analytically valuable for the study of many kinds of social behavior. Four appendixes have been added to make the book more usable. Appendix A provides abrief introduction to calculus and matrix algebra so that readers can understand, though not necessarily derive, the equations presented. Appendix B provides an index of the principal symbols used. Appendix C gives the answers to the exercises found at the end of each chapter. Those exercises should be seen as an extension of the text, and are intended to inform as weil as to challenge.

This book presents an introduction to the problems and strategies for modeling age, period, and cohort (APC) effects for aggregate-level data. These strategies include constrained estimation, the use of age and/or period and/or cohort characteristics, estimable functions, variance decomposition, and a new technique called the s-constraint approach. Emphasizing both the geometry and algebra of several APC approaches, the book develops readers' understanding of the statistical issues of APC analysis and shows how common methods are related to each other.