Longitudinal (p. 38-39)—collects data on a group of people as they age Example of a Longitudinal Experiment: Tracing personality of a group of individuals from the time that they are born until they reach a certain age. Strengths: Can identify change and continuity of behavior patterns and personality traits as a child grows up Weaknesses: -Longitudinal studies are expensive -Require long-term commitment from the researchers and the subjects → parents can also choose to pull their kids out of the study at any time -Selective Dropout: Some ethnic, racial or economic groups are more likely to drop out than others, which creates selective dropout and leaves a biased sample that which impacts the validity of the study Cross-Sectional (p. 39-40)—collects …show more content…
Why is developmental theory considered theoretically eclectic? How would you combine theoretical perspectives to support what you consider the most useful framework for understanding the “normative” development of diverse children and adolescents and their varied experiences? What are challenges to developing an adequate theoretical orientation? Developmental science has two main goals. The first is to understand basic biological and cultural process of development and the second is to devise effective measures to safeguard and promote development. The whole reason that people devise developmental theories is to reach the overarching goals of developmental science. Because every developmental theorist comes from different cultural background and has a different perspective on life, they have differing ideas of how to reach the overall goals of developmental science. That is why developmental theories are theoretically eclectic. Theorists pull bits and pieces from all sorts of developmental theories to create a theory that they think best reaches the overall goal of developmental science. Caregivers also have, even if only subconsciously, have their own theoretically eclectic developmental theories. They have a unique child who is fundamentally different from the test subjects in developmental studies and so one developmental theory will not completely and totally work for their child. As such, they must pull ideas and parts from multiple different theories …show more content…
I would likely also draw from Bandura’s theory** social learning to account for the peers and family members that pour into children’s and adolescent’s lives. Aside from Vygotsky and Bandura’s theory, I would also use a person-centered approach to understand “normative” development of diverse groups. Typically, normative development is tricky because it is unfair to compare people from different backgrounds and environments because the skills that one person possesses may make them well developed in one context and not in another. However, I think it is virtually impossible to understand development without employing some sort of “normative” development as a guide. I think that it would be more beneficial to compare people who have similar backgrounds, environments and life experiences and then to judge their development based off