Suppose I have data on n subjects with at most 3 time points. The first subject has x1, x2, and x3 responses at times 0, 1, and 2. The second has time 0, and 3, and the third only at time 0 and so forth. Would it make sense to create 3 definition variables, say d1, d2, and d3:
d1 d2 d3
0 1 2
0 3 NA
0 NA NA
and use data.d1, data.d2, and data.3 for the slope path labels in a growth model that has a latent intercept and a latent slope?