The number of longitudinal data archives is growing almost daily, yet no resource exists to help understand the relationship between research questions and archival data--until now. Drawing on a single project, the Lewis Terman Study at Stanford University, the authors illustrate how to use the model-fitting process to select and fit the right data set to a particular research problem. Employing a step-by-step approach, this handy volume covers the measurement of historical influences, the adaptation of existing coding schemes to temporal patterns that are characteristic of life records, and the recasting of archival materials to illuminate contemporary questions that the data were not designed to answer.