[acb-hsp] Studying Individual and Family Development

[J.Rayl]

Studying Individual and Family Development: Linking Theory and Research
by Marion O'Brien
The goal of research into individual and family development is to understand the
processes by which individuals and families adapt successfully to the challenges
that confront them or, alternatively, become dysfunctional. In the 30-plus years
that have passed since the publication of Bell's (1968) descriptions of child effects
on parents and Sameroff and Chandler's (1975) examination of developmental processes,
developmental scientists have become sensitized to the complexity involved in studying
these processes. Contextualism, dynamic systems, and transactional analyses are now
the catchwords used to indicate that the authors of a research proposal or report
recognize that bidirectional and reciprocal relations exist among the variables they
study. Often, however, these catchwords are emphasized in our introductions and ignored
in our research designs and analyses (Tudge, 2000). A gap exists between our theoretical
models of development and our empirical approaches to studying change.
This brief essay addresses that gap. First, I discuss common characteristics of modern
theoretical approaches to understanding processes of individual and family development
that have become widely accepted in the fields of developmental psychology, family
studies, and human development. Following from this base, I examine challenges facing
us in the application of our theoretical approaches to the analysis of developmental
processes.
The ideas presented here are not new. The complexity of transactional developmental
processes has been widely discussed by theoreticians (e.g., Bertalanffy, 1968; Bronfenbrenner,
1979; Gottlieb, 1996, to name just a few), and the difficulty of turning these complex
processes into analyzable data has been recognized (Crouter & Booth, 2003; Sameroff
& Mackenzie, 2003). Some observers have, in fact, proposed that essentially all the
statistical procedures currently in use to study development need to be replaced
with new or at least different methods (Bergman, Magnusson, & El-Khouri, 2003; Tudge,
2003). My position is not as strong as that. I believe there have been and will continue
to be useful contributions to the study of developmental process using existing empirical
and statistical approaches as well as new ones. My goal is to identify some inconsistencies
between our theoretical assumptions and both the design of our studies and the analytic
methods we use and to suggest some ways to bring the two into closer concordance.
CURRENT THEORETICAL APPROACHES TO THE STUDY OF DEVELOPMENT
Living systems are defined by change. Thus, research into individual development
or the functioning of a family involves an examination of change. Our interest may
be in the rate of change (i.e., vocabulary acquisition by toddlers), the direction
of change (i.e., positive vs. negative family accommodation to chronic illness),
or identifying ways to promote change (i.e., developing interventions to reduce risk
of abuse). The change we study may be quantitative (i.e., frequency of marital conflict)
or qualitative (i.e., divorce). Even when our research designs are not intended to
capture change, the rationale for our questions assumes that the phenomena we do
capture are important as determinants or outcomes of a process of change. For example,
family interaction may be observed at a single time point, but the underlying assumption
behind the study design is that supportive parent-child interaction at age 12 is
important for the child's successful negotiation of the adolescent transition.
This emphasis on process and change rests on theoretical approaches that are dynamic
in their conceptualization. Not so long ago, developmental psychologists could be
divided into two camps: those who saw developmental change as mechanistic, imposed
by the environment on a largely passive individual, and those who saw change arising
from within an active individual who selectively sought out experience (Cairns, 1998).
Today, these positions seem almost quaint in their simplicity. Similarly, within
the family arena, the structural functionalism of the mid-20th century gave way to
contextual approaches from such areas as feminist theory, family therapy, and the
life course perspective (Boss, Doherty, LaRossa, Schumm, & Steinmetz, 1993). Advances
in neurobiology, ethology, and genetics have laid to rest any remnants of the nature-nurture
dichotomy in favor of complex, multilevel, reciprocal, interconnected, and altogether
too complicated heuristics representing the processes of developmental change and
family functioning. These theoretical approaches are subsumed under the general label
of contextual models or systems approaches. They include, among others, ecological
system theory (Bronfenbrenner, 1979; Bronfenbrenner & Morris, 1998), family systems
theory (Whitchurch & Constantine, 1993), epigenetic theory (Gottlieb, 1992), dynamic
systems theory (Thelen & Smith, 1998), developmental contextualism (Lerner & Simi,
2000), and the holistic-interactionistic paradigm (Bergman, Cairns, Nilsson, & Nystedt,
2000). All these theoretical approaches have as their goal the description of interactions
among biological, behavioral, and environmental processes over developmental time.
Some of these theoretical models appear at first glance to be intimidating in their
complexity and so global as to not readily generate researchable questions. In many
ways, these theories more closely resemble metatheories or worldviews, overarching
frameworks for thinking about individual and family development, than classical theories
used in experimental science. Although differing from one another in some respects,
these theoretical approaches share two core principles that can serve as benchmarks
against which to evaluate the extent to which our research approaches are consistent
with our models of change. These principles, simply stated, are as follows:
* Processes of change operate at multiple levels, from the cellular to the cultural
* Processes of change, across all levels, are transactional and reciprocal
Acceptance of these principles leads us to a consideration of analytic methods used
in the field of human development and family studies.
STUDYING PROCESSES OF CHANGE AT MULTIPLE LEVELS
Systems theories recognize that development is a complex process involving biology,
individual beliefs and behavior, and interpersonal transactions, all embedded within
cultural context. This principle suggests research into child and family development
that is multidisciplinary, broad in scope, and linked to the contexts in which people
live.
The Need for Multidisciplinary Research
The field of human development and family studies is inherently multidisciplinary.
At many universities, faculty trained in separate disciplines-psychology, sociology,
gerontology, and early childhood education, among others-identify themselves as members
of a single department of human development and family studies and work together
routinely on academic business. Interdisciplinary collaboration is valued by our
professional organizations; both the Society for Research in Child Development and
the National Council on Family Relations emphasize and encourage participation by
professionals from many disciplines. There is a general recognition of the importance
of integrating theoretical approaches, models, and methods from multiple disciplines
into our research approaches.
Much recent attention has been devoted to the incorporation of biological processes
in the study of human behavior (e.g., Magnusson & Stattin, 1998). Advances in molecular
genetics, brain imaging, and neurochemistry have clarified the extensive role biology
plays in individual behavioral development. Unlike earlier swings of the pendulum
toward the biological side, that have often resulted in simplistic and deterministic
models ("biology is destiny," for example), the current focus on biological underpinnings
of behavior is multifaceted and acknowledges the complex transactions between nature
and nurture. Just as brain structures influence behavior, behavior changes the brain.
Just as genes are involved in the display of complex human traits, life experience
contributes to the activation of genes. Perhaps the most fully developed current
conceptualization of the interplay between biology, behavior, and culture has been
set forth by Gottlieb (1992, 1996), whose epigenetic theory postulates multiple interconnected
and reciprocal pathways across all levels of development. This model emphasizes that
the question of interest is not how much biology contributes to behavior and development
as compared with the environment, but instead how biology and the environment interact,
over developmental time, to produce individuals or families that are more or less
successful in adapting to the context in which they live.
Biology is not the only discipline whose contributions are shaping ideas about development
and family processes. With an increased interest in cultural contexts comes a recognition
of the potential role that anthropologists can play in conceptualizing and interpreting
aspects of the broader milieu in which families are embedded (e.g., Weisner, 2002).
Demographic and economic approaches are increasingly being integrated into studies
of child and family development (Foster, 2002). Pediatricians and public health specialists
emphasize the importance of healthy functioning both in studies of normative development
and in the goals of prevention and intervention programs (Olds et al., 1998).
Yet, the reality is that most of our research is not interdisciplinary. There are
many structural reasons for this. Within the academic reward structure, collaborating
with faculty in other departments is not high on the list. Grant proposals tend to
be reviewed by study groups made up largely of members of a single discipline. Collaboration
takes time.
There are conceptual reasons as well. The intellectual histories of each of our disciplines
exert an influence on us that is not unlike the role of culture in human behavior.
It is not easy to merge these histories. Rules of evidence differ and paradigms clash.
The anthropologist's reliance on qualitative methods and participant involvement,
although these methods are consistent with contextual theories, run counter to the
psychological and sociological tradition of quantitative statistical analyses (Kidd,
2002). At the other end of the spectrum, although the approaches used by economists
have offered new ways of thinking about individual development and especially family
functioning, economists have less interest in the kinds of process analyses that
are at the heart of systems models and focus instead on outcomes (Foster, 2002).
There is no easy way to make research more interdisciplinary. At some universities,
interdisciplinary research centers have been established to promote such efforts.
Another trend in the field-toward research projects of larger scope and longer duration-has
the potential to encourage the inclusion of multiple perspectives.
Linking Large-Scale and Smaller Scale Research
"Big" science is popular these days. Physicists seeking to understand the nature
of the atom and molecular biologists mapping the human genome have contributed to
the image of science as progressing through the collaborative efforts of large groups
of individuals working together on a common problem. In behavioral science, this
approach has been implemented in the form of large survey studies using nationally
representative samples and smaller, but still extensive, multisite studies focusing
on particular issues considered to be of widespread importance (see Table 1 for a
listing of some of these studies).
Large-scale studies have many advantages from a systems or contextual viewpoint.
They usually include samples that are diverse in terms of social class, ethnicity,
and cultural background and therefore allow for meaningful analysis of contextual
factors. Several of these initiatives have been fortunate to receive funding over
a long enough period of time that processes of developmental change can begin to
be studied more comprehensively than has been possible in the past. The large number
of participants in many of these studies affords adequate statistical power to address
questions about developmental processes as they may operate differently for girls
versus boys, single female-headed households versus two-adult households, and rural
areas versus urban neighborhoods. Most of the large-scale research initiatives launched
in the past 20 years have also included provisions for making their databases publicly
available to researchers not directly involved with the collection of the data. These
data resources have great potential for promoting interdisciplinary work as scientists
from various research traditions examine questions of shared interest. When multidisciplinary
teams of scientists are involved in the design of such studies, or serve on their
advisory boards, the opportunities for integration across research areas are considerable.
These advantages are offset by a number of limitations common to many large-scale
research efforts. The broad scope and wide-ranging goals of some large studies have
been accompanied by a lack of theoretical and methodological rigor. Many constructs
may be measured, but the theoretical linkages across constructs may be weak or even
questionable. Further, it is not uncommon for complex individual or family level
constructs (satisfaction with parenting is an excellent example cited by Sabatelli
& Waldron, 1995) to be measured by a single item that may or may not capture important
aspects of the respondent's experience ("How often would you rather be childless?").
Unless a strategy of embedding smaller, more focused studies within the larger framework
is adopted, projects involving many hundreds or thousands of participants also do
not lend themselves to in-depth, possibly qualitative, analyses of the thought processes
contributing to decisions that precede an outward behavior of interest. Thus, we
may be able to describe a child's history of child care but know nothing of the underlying
reasons the child received those types of care for that number of hours. Finally,
although large-scale studies could encompass measurement at the biological, individual,
interpersonal, and cultural levels, they are too often designed and directed by scientists
from only one or two disciplines whose interests and expertise do not span this full
range.
Large-scale nationally representative or multisite studies are here to stay, and
they have great potential to enhance research into developmental processes. For that
potential to be fully realized, however, these efforts require the contribution of
continued and expanded smaller scale research that can look more closely at reciprocal
processes of change within individuals and families. No one approach to research
is the "right" one. Perhaps a productive strategy is to merge them, providing funding
streams that link smaller scale research initiatives with larger studies. In other
words, a large-scale core project could serve as an overarching structure within
which would be embedded smaller scale projects examining related developmental processes
at a more microlevel. Similarly, projects designed as multisite studies would be
enhanced by the use of dual research strategies: a common protocol across all sites
to address key theory-driven questions combined with smaller individual projects
conducted by subsets of researchers or affiliated researchers that extend the reach
of the larger project and address in-depth issues of developmental and family process.
Linking research at the macroand microlevels could help to improve the quality and
consistency of analytic strategies and bring greater clarity to findings from researchers
working at different levels of analysis. Participation at both levels by scientists
from different disciplines could also add breadth and depth to the picture of individual
and family development resulting from the set of linked studies.
Studying the Contexts of Individual and Family Development
The diversity of human experience is recognized in current theories about the development
of individuals and families. The microsystems, exosystems, macrosystems, and chronosystems
of ecological systems theory (Bronfenbrenner, 1979) have become an integral part
of our thinking. We know that individual and interpersonal behavior is a function
of overlapping influences of such factors as economics, family structure, school
or workplace characteristics, and social networks. The importance of examining behavior
in natural situations has been accepted, if not always followed. Research designs
are much more likely now than in the past to include children and families of varied
ethnic backgrounds. Cross-cultural research in the pursuit of the universals of development
is now amplified by cultural research focusing on the uniqueness of cultures.
Within much of our published literature, however, diversity is acknowledged but not
analyzed. The standard approach to data analysis involves entering factors representing
diversity as controls, in order that the key variables of interest can be examined
without fully considering the potential importance or meaning of the variability
associated with that diversity. Thus, we may control family income in studies of
children's cognitive ability and achievement as if income did not bring with it varying
opportunities to learn. We may control ethnicity in studies of parent-adolescent
conflict as if cultures did not espouse different "rules" for the conduct of arguments.
Of course, not every study can examine every possible contextual factor in detail.
If we follow the logic of our contextual and systems approaches, however, some aspect
of context or process has to be close to the heart of every theoretically driven
question we ask. For example, once we identify a trend toward declining marital satisfaction
following the birth of a child, we begin to ask why. What differentiates couples
who become less satisfied from those who do not? Is it their demographic and economic
status? their prior histories? their expectations regarding parenthood? Similarly,
if we find links between the quality of child care and children's cognitive and language
skills, the next step is an examination of specific aspects of child-care environments
that contribute to learning in children who come to those environments with a specific
set of characteristics. Understanding how developmental and family processes vary
by context is, by definition, what we seek to know. Of particular interest to many
who study child and family development are the intersections of race, class, and
gender (e.g., Hill & Sprague, 1999). Marginalizing these contextual variables by
using them as statistical controls rather than placing them at the center of our
analyses contradicts our theoretical framework and limits our ability to understand
individual and family development (Newcombe, 2003).
In much behavioral science research, comparison of contexts has tended to involve
some degree of criticism of one or the other group. Adolescent girls' visual-spatial
abilities are not as good as those of boys; single mothers provide less of the supervision
developing children need than do two-parent families. Value-laden comparisons have
contributed to the call expressed by many minority researchers in the United States
for more research focusing on within-group variation rather than between-group differences
(Doucette-Gates, Brooks-Gunn, & Chase-Lansdale, 1998; McLoyd, Cauce, Takeuchi, &
Wilson, 2000). Within-group variation can help us to understand the processes of
successful adaptation to environmental demands that are unique to a particular context.
Between-group comparisons do not have to imply superiority of one group over another,
however. Identifying the ways in which developmental and family processes are the
same across contextual groups and the ways they differ are both important to furthering
our appreciation for the contribution of culture and context (Dilworth-Anderson,
Williams, & Gibson, 2002). In-depth reviews of areas of literature with an emphasis
on identifying where main effects and between-group analyses have suggested process
questions that have yet to be addressed would help the field in recognizing the need
for more complex analyses.
STUDYING TRANSACTIONAL AND RECIPROCAL PROCESSES OF CHANGE
Systems approaches to the study of individual and family development emphasize the
bidirectional nature of influence-between genetics and environment, parent and child,
and cognition and behavior. No person, event, or context is static or passive. Further,
development occurs in a reciprocal process: One person's behavior affects another's,
whose response alters the behavior of the first, which then in turn again affects
the other's behavior. The baby cries a lot, the father reliably soothes the crying,
the child shows positive emotion with the dad, the dad becomes more committed to
the parenting role. If the crying baby has a father who becomes irritable and tense,
a different and less positive pattern is likely to follow. Concepts of transaction
and reciprocity suggest research into individual and family development that focuses
on the study of moderating and mediating variables and processes rather than main
effects and that uses holistic approaches to measurement and analysis.
Studying Moderation and Mediation
Much of developmental science has been constructed on analyses of main effects. Children
living in poverty are less successful in school than other children. Maternal depression
in a child's infancy is linked to emotional dysregulation at preschool age. Within
families, main effects models assume that we can learn about the whole by measuring
each individual separately and combining these measurements. Gottlieb and Halpern
(2002) have referred to this kind of linear thinking as "analysis of variance mentality"
(p. 421). This description reminds us that our thinking about the systems of individual
and family development are often tied more closely to the analytic methods we know
and are comfortable with than they are to our theoretical assumptions.
Given conceptualizations of individual development and family functioning as transactional
and reciprocal, main effects and linear models are no longer adequate to capture
the processes of interest. It is not enough to measure a characteristic of an individual,
a family, or a context at one time point and then predict an "outcome" for that individual
or family at a later time point without an examination of the processes that link
the two. Identifying the link between earlier events and later functioning can be
a helpful, and even necessary, first step in understanding process, but it is only
a first step. The study of process requires a focus on process, not on prediction.
The questions posed by systems theories are difficult, and they require more fine-grained
analysis than studies of main effects.
One example of a line of research where main effect results have been followed up
with process analyses is the area of divorce. Early waves of research into divorce
reported that children from families in which parents were divorced had a number
of continuing academic and behavioral difficulties (see Hetherington, 1979, for an
early review). Replicated findings of a main effect for divorce served to focus the
attention of researchers on divorce and encouraged them to ask questions of process.
More complex studies examined such issues as: How were individuals and families functioning
prior to divorce, and how is earlier functioning linked to child adjustment? What
events and perceptions of events led to the decisions of couples to divorce? How
do parent-child relationships change when parents live apart? What is happening within
families following divorce that makes a difference in children's behavior? These
process questions yielded much greater understanding of the dynamics occurring within
families and the processes and contexts that differentiate children who are able
to function successfully after their parents' divorce from those who face continuing
challenges.
For the most part, these process questions involve analysis of moderation and of
mediation (for further discussion of analytic approaches to moderation and mediation,
see Baron & Kenny, 1986; MacKinnon, Lockwood, Hoffman, West, & Sheets, 2002; Rose,
Holmbeck, Coakley, & Franks, 2004). Moderators influence the direction or the strength
of the relation between two other variables. Thus, a family's ethnicity may moderate
the link between parental discipline strategies and child outcomes (e.g., Lansford,
Deater-Deckard, Dodge, Bates, & Pettit, 2004). Questions of moderation use contextual
factors to help us understand, for example, why risk factors are not linked to negative
outcomes for all families. Is marital conflict more likely to result in divorce when
wives are employed? Does the drop in household income that typically accompanies
divorce lead to more negative outcomes for teenagers than for younger children? Is
there a difference in the extent to which the active involvement of a nonresident
father in the child's life ameliorates negative effects for boys versus girls?
Mediators identify reasons why one variable is related to another. Thus, the quality
of parenting may mediate the relation between poverty and its associated stressors
and child social and academic outcomes (McLoyd, 1998). Questions of mediation use
our understanding of the complexity of family context to help us understand how risk
factors operate. Do high levels of marital conflict result in divorce because the
conflict reduces intimacy? Do children in the first year after their parents' divorce
experience higher levels of anxiety and depression because their parents are less
supportive and involved with them? The area of divorce is one in which developmental
and family researchers have actively followed up main effects with process analyses
that address a wide range of complex questions (for a recent review, see Amato &
Sobolewski, 2001). Too often, we have been satisfied with main effects and ready
to move on to the next analysis linking early experience with later difficulties,
rather than asking the hard questions about moderating and mediating processes linked
to individual and family characteristics and contexts.
Holistic Approaches to Measurement and Analysis
Within contextual theories, individual development and family functioning are seen
as processes of adaptation to external challenge (Luthar, 2003). Adaptation takes
place on all levels-biological, perceptual, cognitive, behavioral, and interpersonal-in
an integrated, not random, manner. Similarly, contextual challenges are typically
multivariate, in that disadvantages tend to co-occur just as positive characteristics
of environments do. Families who are poor are usually also undereducated, live in
crowded and chaotic homes and dangerous neighborhoods, have poor health and inadequate
health care, and work at physically demanding jobs on the least desirable shifts.
It is not clear that separating out the effects of one of these factors from the
package of disadvantage, and then controlling the others, is more helpful to our
understanding of family process or child development than identifying co-occurring
patterns of risk. Holistic constructs-sets of related characteristics of individuals,
families, and environments-are beginning to be operationalized as quantitative variables
through structural equation modeling approaches and in person-centered analytic approaches,
such as cluster analysis and latent class analysis. To qualitative researchers, the
search for encompassing and meaningful themes and patterns has long been a primary
goal. The adoption of holistic approaches by quantitative researchers may help to
bridge a methodological divide and contribute to more comprehensive understanding
of developmental contexts.
A classic example of a holistic conceptualization is the idea of "goodness of fit"
used by Thomas and Chess (1984) to describe the extent to which a young child's temperamental
characteristics were adequate to meet the demands for adaptation placed by a family
environment. From this viewpoint, an infant's temperament-at least in part a biologically
based characteristic-can be adaptive or not depending upon the characteristics of
the caregiver and the nature of the caregiving environment. A highly active child
whose parents enjoy physical play and outdoor activities is likely to grow into a
skilled athlete, whereas the same child in a sedentary or an anxious family may receive
criticism rather than encouragement and may be seen as having attentional or behavioral
problems. Studying temperament as a predictor of later outcome, without studying
the environment, is not likely to yield results that help to explain the processes
of development.
Current approaches to the study of risk provide another example of the movement toward
holistic analyses (Kraemer, Stice, Kazdin, Offord, & Kupfer, 2001). Because risk
factors-even those at different levels of analysis-coexist, an important consideration
in identifying risk and intervening to reduce risk has to do with defining the underlying
latent structure through which multiple factors act to affect outcomes. As one example,
when parents separate and a teenager moves to a new community, the adolescent's access
to a positive peer group may be more important in determining the course of later
development than the simple fact of family disruption. The availability of peer groups,
however, may depend heavily on complex and interrelated child and family factors.
Did the custodial parent have to relocate so quickly that neighborhood characteristics
were ignored? Have the custodial parent's paid work hours increased, providing more
income to the family but allowing less time for parental involvement with the child?
Is the teen socially skilled or talented in an area of achievement valued by other
adolescents? The development of effective intervention approaches to minimize negative
outcomes for children and families requires an understanding of the mechanisms by
which biological, behavioral, and contextual risk factors operate in conjunction
with one another.
The multivariate clustering methods referred to as person-centered approaches are
seen by some investigators as capturing the complexity of systems models in ways
that traditional variable-centered analyses cannot (Bergman et al., 2000). Whereas
variable-centered approaches focus on the examination of individual differences,
they also are based on an assumption that developmental processes are similar for
all individuals. The goal of person-centered approaches, by contrast, is to identify
subgroups of individuals that differ from one another in important ways. Once categories
or clusters are identified, the ways in which they differ can provide insight into
variations in the processes of growth and change for particular sets of children
or families. When both approaches are used to analyze the same sets of data, they
do not compete for the right answer but instead may offer increased clarity in our
efforts to understand development in children and families. Within the field of child
development, these approaches have been applied primarily in clinical studies focusing
on discrete subtypes of child behavior problems where the outcomes of interest are
categorical (von Eye & Bergman, 2003). There is currently considerable interest,
however, in the potential of these analytic approaches to allow examination of processes
of change within individuals and families as they affect and are affected by the
contexts in which they live.
One recent example of the use of person-centered analyses to examine family processes
suggests how this approach fits a contextual viewpoint. Mueller and Elder (2003)
clustered grandparents participating in the Iowa Youth and Families Project into
five types on the basis of six aspects of their relationship with their grandchild.
These grandparent clusters were found to differ with regard to intergenerational
family relationships, indicating that family context was more important than demographic
status factors in contributing to grandparent-grandchild relationships. Supportive
and involved grandparents were more likely to have had a positive relationship with
a grandparent of their own when they were growing up and to have children who actively
involved them in the grandchild's life. Thus, family contexts and processes extending
across generations are identified through these analyses as affecting children's
relationships in the present.
Because our goal is to understand how development happens, or the processes through
which developmental change occurs, longitudinal applications of person-centered analyses
are of particular interest. An extension of the grandparent-grandchild relationship
study, for example, in which the grandparent clusters were repeated at a later time
point, would allow identification of relationships that changed and an analysis of
factors associated with that change. Clearly, person-centered approaches offer new
tools for our use and provide a perspective different from traditional regression-based
analyses of individual difference factors. Person-centered approaches are not without
limitations, in that they are heavily data and computer driven rather than relying
on theory to detect patterns that constitute meaningful categories or subgroups.
Further, person-centered techniques are still relatively untested, with new applications
appearing frequently in the literature. These techniques are not the only possible
approach to contextual analyses. But in conjunction with more traditional and familiar
types of analysis, including qualitative analyses, these methods offer another opportunity
for us to link our theoretical propositions with our analytic models.
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS
The worldview that guides research into human development and family studies at the
beginning of the 21st century is a contextual and dynamic one. Whether presented
as ecological systems theory, epigenetic theory, dynamic systems theory, family systems
theory, or holistic interactionism, the underlying and widely shared conceptualization
of development within individuals and families is one in which both nature and nurture
are active processes operating within a complex system of reciprocal influence. Much
of the actual research published in our journals, in contrast, examines direct or
linear effects of individual or contextual characteristics on some outcome that is
described as if it were static and immutable. The reciprocity that is at the heart
of living systems has not yet been fully incorporated into our analytic methods.
To move the field forward, to make our research findings relevant to the lives of
real people, and to improve the design of services aimed at the promotion of positive
individual and family adjustment, we need to bring our analytic approaches in line
with our theory. Structurally, universities and funding agencies can assist the movement
toward such consistency by supporting multidisciplinary research and process-oriented
research using qualitative as well as quantitative methods, longitudinal studies
across theoretically meaningful periods of time, and programmatic efforts to link
large-scale and smaller scale projects. Individually, researchers can examine their
own assumptions and determine the extent to which their questions and analyses are
consistent with the theory they espouse. Are contextual hypotheses proposed without
a plan for measuring important features of contexts? Are main effects of one variable
on another reported with no follow-up to help us understand why or for whom these
relations hold? Are quantitative variable-centered approaches used even when particular
questions could be better addressed by qualitative or person-centered methods? No
single research design is adequate to capture the complexity of the phenomena we
seek to understand. By expanding the range of analytic possibilities and by using
multiple methods, measures, and informants in all studies, we have the best opportunity
to meet our goal of understanding the processes of individual and family adaptation
to their changing environments.
NOTE
The writing of this paper was supported in part by a cooperative agreement (U10 HD25430)
from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development to the University
of Kansas and the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. I thank Jonathan Tudge
for his many contributions to these ideas and Beth Manke and David H. Demo for helpful
suggestions on the manuscript.
-1-
Questia, a part of Gale, Cengage Learning. www.questia.com
Publication Information:
Article Title: Studying Individual and Family Development: Linking Theory and Research.
Contributors: Marion O'Brien - author. Journal Title: Journal of Marriage and Family.
Volume: 67. Issue: 4. Publication Year: 2005. Page Number: 880+. © 2005 National
Council on Family Relations. Provided by ProQuest LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Next Page

Jessie Rayl
EM: thedogmom63 at frontier.com
PH:304.671.9780
www.facebook.com/eaglewings10

"But they that wait upon the LORD shall renew their strength; they shall
mount up with wings as eagles. They shall run, and not be weary"--Isaiah 40.31
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://www.acb.org/pipermail/acb-hsp/attachments/20110624/1928efee/attachment-0001.html>