Researchers in the fields of cognitive and language development have made less use of large-scale longitudinal designs and of person-centered approaches to data analysis than have researchers in the fields of social and personality development. It is argued that differences among domains of developmental psychology in the research methods employed…

An objective index of degree of parental agreement was generated by comparing the independent responses of 83 parental dyads to a set of Q-sort items referencing child-rearing values and orientations. This index was found to significantly predict subsequent continuation or termination of the marriage and to relate to independently-described…

Based on research which has followed the behavioral development of 133 subjects from infancy to early adulthood, discusses incidence of behavior disorders, defines the concept of temperament, and briefly discusses findings. Remarks on the usefulness of the "goodness of fit" concept for tracing developmental sequences. (GC)

Findings indicate that (1) boys who more frequently break school rules and engage in aggressive or deviant behavior may often come to have more negative attitudes toward school staff and less involvement in school; and (2) student involvement and participation in school life can influence certain aspects of adolescent personality. (Author/PN)

This study was designed to investigate aspects of childhood social functioning in early interaction and socialization patterns of normal families. Sixteen families with a child between 1 and 3 years of age, and a second child born when the study began, were observed over a 2-year period. Intelligence tests were administered to both children when…

This book describes a series of studies included in a 5-year program of research on the social adjustment of school children in the third through sixth grades. The sample consists of a total of 40,000 children from Texas and Minnesota, including a small subsample of 5,000 used in a 4-year longitudinal study. Peer acceptance-rejection scores…

The Fullerton Longitudinal Study is a contemporary prospective investigation that spans approximately a quarter of a century. Commencing at age 1, children and their families were systematically followed every 6 months from infancy through preschool and annually at ages 5 through 17. They were again assessed at age 24. The course of development…

In order to determine West German rural youths' involvement in and availability to the mechanism of social change, surveys of youth aged 17-28 in towns of less than 5,000 people were made in 1955, 1968, and 1980. Between 1955 and 1980 the social structure of rural youth changed dramatically, especially in employment. In 1955, 55% of rural youth…

Reviews the research methods, design, and main findings of the Austin-Mexico City cross-cultural study of personality and intellectual development using an overlapping longitudinal design. A span of 12 years of development was extrapolated from six years of repeated testing with children ages 6, 9, and 12 years. (SS)

This paper reports the results of an ongoing study of individuals' ego control and ego resiliency. The study began with 130 subjects in 1969 when the subjects were in nursery school. At the most recent assessment, 104 participants still remained. Ego control is defined as the degree and kind of control individuals exert over their impulses, and…

This longitudinal study examined consistency and change in human personality. Rather than studying the consistency of individual differences over time, an approach which considers only the stability of a variable at the group level and ignores differences in stability at an individual level, this study used a person-centered approach to study…

This monograph reviews the impact of the freshman year and the four years of undergraduate study on a central dimension of personal development: the formation of character and its progression from late adolescence to young adulthood. A foreword by Nevitt Sanford places the discussion in the context of a general loss by American universities of…

Investigates ego development in 32 lower-class and lower-middle class Black students at the sixth and twelfth grade levels. Ego development was measured by the Washington University Sentence Completion Test (WU-SCT). (Author/SS)

The authors examined the prediction of occupational attainment by age 40 from contextual and personal variables assessed during childhood and adolescence in 2 participant samples: (a) the Columbia County Longitudinal Study, a study of 856 third graders in a semirural county in New York State that began in 1960, and (b) the Jyvaskyla Longitudinal…

This paper presents the "uses of the past" model of personality development, a model in which adult development transforms an individual's history into resources for meeting present demands. The components of the model are delineated in terms of how: (1) neither the past nor the present is fixed in its effects or its contribution to present…