Identifying multiple change points in a linear mixed effects model

Although change‐point analysis methods for longitudinal data have been developed, it is often of interest to detect multiple change points in longitudinal data. In this paper, we propose a linear mixed effects modeling framework for identifying multiple change points in longitudinal Gaussian data. Specifically, we develop a novel statistical and computational framework that integrates the expectation–maximization and the dynamic programming algorithms. We conduct a comprehensive simulation study to demonstrate the performance of our method. We illustrate our method with an analysis of data from a trial evaluating a behavioral intervention for the control of type I diabetes in adolescents with HbA1c as the longitudinal response variable. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.