Acknowledgments

As with the writing of each of my other books, there are several people to whom I owe a great deal of thanks. First and foremost, I wish to express my sincere appreciation to Albert Maydeu-Olivares and Kris Preacher for both their time and invaluable suggestions related to several chapters. I am also very grateful to Ron Heck and Ke-Hai Yuan for lending their expertise to assist me in addressing particular issues related to multilevel modeling.

As has been the case for my last four books, I have had the great fortune to have Debra Riegert as my editor. As always, I wish to express my very special thanks to Debra, whom I consider to be the crème de la crème of editors and, in addition, a paragon of patience! As a chronic list maker and deadline setter, my perspective of the ideal editor is one who allows me to set and meet my own deadlines without the impingement of editorial pressure; this, Debra has done in spades! Indeed, for the same reason, I am additionally grateful to Suzanne Lassandro who truly has been the best production editor with whom I have ever had the pleasure of working. Thank you both so much for your pressure-free approach to the editorial process.

I wish also to extend sincere gratitude to my multitude of loyal readers around the globe. Many of you have introduced yourselves to me at conferences, at one of my SEM workshops, or via email correspondence. I truly value these brief, yet incredibly warm exchanges and thank you so much for taking the time to share with me your many achievements and accomplishments following your walk through my selected SEM applications. Thank you all for your continued loyalty over the years. I hope you enjoy this latest addition of the Mplus book to my series of introductory books and look forward to hearing from you!

Last, but certainly far from the least, I am grateful to my husband, Alex, for his continued patience, support, and understanding of the incredible number of hours that my computer and I necessarily spend together working through a project of this sort. I consider myself to be fortunate indeed!