Iy. Guo et al., A PC PROGRAM FOR COMPUTING MCMAHANS TRACKING INDEXES FROM ONE-SAMPLE LONGITUDINAL DATA SETS, International journal of bio-medical computing, 35(4), 1994, pp. 255-266
Tracking refers to regular, predictable growth behavior. Most definiti
ons of the term are related to the idea that tracking occurs to the ex
tent that individuals' repeated measurements maintain their relative p
ositions in the distribution of the measurement whose growth is being
monitored as that distribution changes over time. In this paper we des
cribe four indices of tracking, all due to McMahan (Biometrics, 37 (19
81) 447-455), which may be used to measure the extent to which a given
longitudinal sample exhibits this 'regular behavior,' and we provide
a program, written in GAUSS386i, for performing the associated computa
tions. An example is given, and the values of McMahan's indices are co
mpared to several alternative measures of tracking.