Developmental Psychology Research Designs

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Developmental PsychologyResearch Designs

• Adlyn Perez
• PSYC 452
• January 29, 2008

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Longitudinal Research Design

• Repeated Measures Design
• Observations collected from the same individual
  over time
• Advantages
• Impact of earlier events can be determined (i.e.
  environment, education)
• Can determine intra-individual differences
• Can show stability of behavior

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Longitudinal Research Design

• Disadvantages
• Costly
• Practice Effects
• Selective drop-out (selective survival),
  non-representative samples
• Less able to generalize across generations due to
  culture changes (i.e. politics, technology)
• Difficult to distinguish between developmental
  trends and historical events

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Cross-Sectional Design

• Between Subjects Design
• Observes different age groups simultaneously
• Advantages
• Relatively inexpensive
• Rapid data collection, interpretation and results
• Can take into account inter-individual
  differences
• Light burden on participants

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Cross-Sectional Design

• Disadvantages
• Must assume that differences between age groups
  are developmental and not due to other factors
• No information on past determinants for observed
  behavior in separate age groups
• Selective survival of older participants
• Snap-shot look at development, doesnt show how
  development occurs as a function of change

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Sequential Design

• Repeated testing of different age groups over
  time
• Combination of longitudinal and sequential design
• Advantages
• Age groups overlap so that a comparison of
  different generations at the same age is possible
• Observing development as a function of change is
  possible
• Can generalize results with more confidence than
  the longitudinal design

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Sequential Design

• Disadvantages
• Selective survival is still a problem in
  maintaining representative samples