Longitudinal panel studies are widely used in developmental science to address important research questions on human development across the lifespan. These studies, however, are often challenging to implement. They can be costly, time-consuming, and vulnerable to test--retest effects or high attrition over time. Planned missingness designs (PMDs),…

Developmental scientists are often interested in subgroups of people who share commonalities in aspects of development; these subgroups often cannot be captured directly but instead must be inferred from other information. Mixture models can be used in these situations. Two specific types of mixture models, latent profile transition analyses and…

While developmental discourses have been heavily critiqued in relation to education systems, less attention has been paid to how these impact the data collection process in classroom research. This article utilises Foucault's concept of regime of truth to highlight the pervasiveness of developmental discourses when conducting research in primary…

Strategies for understanding the effect of negative life events on the psychosocial development of youth have focused on the aggregate association between risk factors and poor developmental outcomes. However, there is a strand of research in developmental psychology that has pushed for understanding the contextual nature of negative life events;…

The process of building a culture of evidence involves using data to understand where students are experiencing problems, designing strategies for remedying those problems, implementing them, and then evaluating the effectiveness of those implemented strategies. This case study is about two programs that were implemented within the last two years…

More than half of all online American adolescents and emerging adults have created personal profiles for social networking on the Internet. Does homophily in their offline friendships extend online? Drawing mainly on research of face-to-face friendship, we collected data from the public spaces, called "walls," of 129 young Americans ages 16 to 19…

Developmental science rests on describing, explaining, and optimizing intraindividual changes and, hence, empirically requires longitudinal research. Problems of missing data arise in most longitudinal studies, thus creating challenges for interpreting the substance and structure of intraindividual change. Using a sample of reports of longitudinal…

This article explores the development of observation in scientific and everyday contexts. Fundamental to all scientific activity, expert observation is a complex practice that requires the coordination of disciplinary knowledge, theory, and habits of attention. On the surface, observation appears to be a simple skill. Consequently, children may be…

This paper suggests that, at present, a science of natural developmental processes does not exist because few studies are concerned with development as it transpires in naturalistic environments and because truly developmental data are not collected or analyzed. (Author/JMB)

This paper attempts to clarify some of the changes that have taken place in developmental psychology between 1962 and 1975. Journal references in all articles in six journals devoted primarily to research in developmental psychology were tabulated. Patterns of references to developmental and to nondevelopmental journals are analyzed and discussed.…

The purpose of this paper is to discuss ways in which developmental psychology suffers from the lack of an appropriate technology of measurement and statistical analysis. The paper begins by noting that developmental psychology is the study of change; that individuals develop through a succession of "stages" which are separated by…

A general developmental model for interindividual differences, intraindividual differences, and intraindividual changes is described in terms of individuals, variables, and occasions. (ST)

The collection of verbal reports is one way in which cognitive and developmental psychologists gather data to formulate and corroborate models of problem solving. The current use of verbal reports to design and validate educational assessments reflects the growing trend to fuse cognitive psychological research and educational measurement. However,…

Reviews current large-scale, longitudinal studies focusing on children. Describes the data collected, including child outcomes, process-oriented information on child-parent interactions, child care quality, parental mental health, family violence, fathering, employment patterns, and community characteristics. Notes that several studies incorporate…