FEM3102

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FEM3102

• Research Methods in Adult Development and Aging

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THEORIES OF ADULT DEVELOPMENT
Table 1 Theoretical Approaches in Adult
Development
APPROACH WRITERS APPROACH FOCUS TOPIC
Behavior, social learning Bandura (1969, 1977) Seligman (1972) Learning Motivation
Psychoanalysis Freud (1946) Erikson (1964, 1979) Personality Motivation
Humanistic Maslow (1970) Kohlberg (1973, 1981) Motivation Moral development
Intraindividual differences Cattel (1971), Horn (1980) Guilford, Zimmerman Guildford (1976) Schaie (1977,1978) Intellectual development Personality
Attribution Whitbourne (1985) Self-esteem Social psychology
Information processing Sternberg (1980) Learning, Memory
Dialectic Riegel (1975, 1976) Personality, Life Crisis
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• Behavior, Social Learning
• This approach focus on the environment as an
  indicator of behavior behavioral changes
• Reward and punishment will influence human
  behaviors.
• This approach considered role model which has
  emotional bond and can influence human behaviors.

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• Psychoanalysis
• Focuses on emotional conflict and unconscious
  mental process
• Emotional conflict is a result of social
  responsibilities or reality against individual
  desire
• Erikson expanded psychoanalysis to adulthood?
  psychosocial crisis in adulthood is intimacy
  conflict, productivity and integrity

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• Humanistic
• Focuses on motivation as the primary difference
  between human and animal.
• Emphasize on personal growth ? self-actualization
• Humans will put the highest expectations to get
  the best outcome

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• Individual differences
• This approach is always used in psychology test
  for example intelligence test and personality
  test
• Each individual is different
• Information processing
• Can give explanations of older peoples memories
  and perceptions
• Human operation computer

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• Attribution
• Labeling on events that happened in society
• This label can be attribution depending on types
  of label toward that events
• The individual will behave accordingly to the
  label of events that been given.

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• Dialectic
• focuses on changes and emphasizes on resolution
  and synthesis after individual face conflicting
  issues
• Individual is seen as an active organism ? always
  face incongruent and conflicting situations and
  therefore increase higher level skills through
  revolution and synthesis to handle conflict.

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Problem situation

• Leah and Sarah are both 75 years and are in
  fairly good health. They believe that their
  memory is not as good as it once was, so they
  both use various memory aids Leah tries to think
  of images in her mind to remember her grocery
  list, whereas Sarah writes them down. Leah and
  Sarah got into a discussion recently about which
  technique works better.

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Measuring adult development and aging

• Three approaches
• Observing systematically
• Using tasks to sample behavior
• Asking people for self-reports
• Researchers must also ensure that the
  participants in the study are representative of
  the larger group of people in question.

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Concepts in measuring development

• Reliability
• The extent to which it provides a consistent
  index of the behavior or topic of interest.
• Example a measure of memory is reliable to the
  extent that it gives a consistent estimate of
  performance each time you administer it.

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Concepts in measuring development

• Validity
• The extent to which it measures what researchers
  think it measures.
• Example a measure of memory is valid if it can
  be shown to actually measure memory (and not
  vocabulary ability, for example)
• Often established by showing that the measure is
  in question is closely related to another measure
  known to be valid.

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1. Systematic Observation

• Involves watching people and carefully recording
  what they say or do.
• Two forms of systematic observation
• Naturalistic observation
• Structured observation

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Naturalistic observation

• People are observed as they behave spontaneously
  in some real-life situations.
• Example Leah and Sarah could be observed in the
  grocery store purchasing their items as a way to
  test how well they remember.

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Structured observation

• Researchers create a setting that is particularly
  likely to elicit the behavior of interest.
• Especially useful to study behaviors that are
  difficult to observe naturally.
• Example Emergency is a rare and an unpredictable
  event. Therefore, researchers can stage an
  emergency and observe how people react.
• However, whether the behaviors in staged
  situations are the same as in naturally occurring
  situations is difficult to determine. Therefore,
  it is difficult to generalize from staged setting
  to the real world.

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2. Sampling behavior with tasks

• When investigators cannot directly observe
  certain behaviors, they create tasks that allow
  them to sample the behavior.
• Example One way to test adults memory is to
  give them a list of items, perhaps a simulated
  grocery list, to learn and remember.
• This approach is popular because it is
  convenient.
• However, it has a problem with validity. How do
  you know what people do in real life situations
  when the list is actual items they need to
  purchase.

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3. Self-reports

• A special case of using tasks to sample peoples
  behavior. Self-reports are simply peoples
  answers to questions about topic of interest.
• Written form Questionnaire
• Verbal form Interview
• Questions are created to probe different aspects
  about the topic of interest.
• Example If you think imagery and lists are
  common ways people use to remember grocery items,
  you could devise a questionnaire and survey
  several people to find out.

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3. Self-reports

• Self-reports are very convenient and provide
  information on the topic of interest.
• However self-report are not always good measure
  as they can be inaccurate. People may not always
  remember precisely what they did in the past, or
  they may report what they think the researcher
  wants to hear.

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Representative sampling

• Researchers are normally interested in broad
  groups of people called populations. Example FEM
  students taking FEM3102, the baby boomer
  generation.
• Almost all studies include only a sample of
  people, which is a subset of the population.
• Researchers must be careful to ensure that their
  sample is truly representative of the population
  of interest.

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Representative sampling

• An unrepresentative sample can result in invalid
  research.
• Always critically evaluate the sample in a
  research and how the researchers generalize their
  findings.

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General designs for research

• Primary designs for studying adult development
  and aging
• Experimental studies
• Correlational studies
• Case studies

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1. Experimental design

• An experiment involves manipulating a key factor
  that the researcher believes is responsible for a
  particular behavior and randomly assigning
  participants to the experimental and control
  groups.
• The researcher is most interested in identifying
  differences between two groups of people
• Experimental group receives the manipulation
• Control group does not receive manipulation

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• The researcher exerts precise control over all
  important aspects of the study including the
  variable of interest, the setting and the
  participants.
• Researchers can infer cause-and-effect relations
  about variables due to systematic manipulation of
  key variables.
• Independent variables variables manipulated by
  the experimenter.
• Dependent variables behaviors or outcomes that
  are measured.

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• Age cannot be an independent variable because we
  cannot manipulate it.
• Therefore, we cannot conduct true experiments to
  examine the effects of age on a persons
  behavior. At best, we can find age-related
  effects of an independent variable on dependent
  variables.

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2. Correlational design

• In a correlational study, investigators examine
  relations between variables as they exist
  naturally in the world.
• In the simplest correlational study, a researcher
  measures two variables, then sees how they are
  related.
• The results of a correlational study usually are
  measured by computing a correlation coefficent
  (r).

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• Correlations can range from - 1.0 to 1.0,
  reflecting three different types of relations
  between the two variables
• When r 0, the two variables are unrelated.
• When r gt 0, the variables are positively related.
• When r lt 0, the variables are inversely related.
• Correlational studies do not imply
  cause-and-effect relations.
• However they do provide important information
  about the strength of the relation between
  variables (reflected in the absolute value of the
  correlation coefficient).

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• Correlational techniques are used a great deal
  because developmental researchers are interested
  in how variables are related to factors that are
  very difficult, if not impossible, to manipulate.
• Most developmental research is correlational at
  some level because age cannot be manipulated
  within an individual.
• This means we can describe many developmental
  phenomena, but we can only explain some of them.

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3. Case study design

• Used when researchers cannot obtain measures
  directly from people and are able only to watch
  them carefully.
• In certain situations, researchers may be able to
  study a single individual in great detail in a
  case study.
• Case study is especially useful when researchers
  want to investigate a rare phenomena, such as
  uncommon diseases or people with extremely high
  ability.

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• Case studies are also useful for opening new
  areas of study which can be followed by larger
  studies using other methods (e.g. experiments).
• The primary limitation of this method is whether
  the findings from one individual can be
  generalized to others.

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Designs for studying development

• Developmental researchers need to be sensitive of
  developmental differences in choosing a research
  design.
• Three key variables in developmental research
  design
• Age
• Cohort
• Time of measurement

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Age

• Age effects reflect differences caused by
  underlying processes, such as biological,
  psychological or sociocultural changes.
• Although usually represented by chronological
  age, age effects are inherent changes within the
  person and are not caused by the passage of time
  per se.

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Cohort

• Cohort effects are differences caused by
  experiences and circumstances unique to the
  generation to which one belongs.
• In general, cohort effects corresponds to the
  normative history-graded influences.
• However, it is not easy to define a cohort as it
  can be specific such as in all people born in one
  particular year or general as in the baby-boom
  cohort.

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• Each generation is exposed to different sets of
  historical and personal events e.g. World War II,
  home computers, or opportunities to attend
  college.
• Cohort effects can have significant implications
  on research.

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Time of measurement

• Time-of-measurement effects reflect differences
  stemming from sociocultural, environmental,
  historical or other events at the time data are
  obtained from the participants.
• The point in time in which a researcher decides
  to do research could lead him or her to different
  conclusions about the phenomenon being studied.
• Example Data about wage increase may be
  influenced by the economic conditions of that
  year (economic recession vs. boom)

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• The three building-block variables (age, cohort,
  and time of measurement) can be represented in a
  single chart.

Time of Measurement Time of Measurement Time of Measurement Time of Measurement Time of Measurement
Cohort 2000 2010 2020 2030
1950 50 60 70 80
1960 40 50 60 70
1970 30 40 50 60
1980 20 30 40 50
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• Cohort is represented by the years in the first
  column.
• Time of measurement is represented by the years
  across the top.
• Age is represented by the numbers in individual
  cell. Computed by subtracting the cohort year
  from the time of measurement.
• Confounding is any situation in which one cannot
  determine which of two or more effects is
  responsible for the behaviors being observed.

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Three types of research design

• Cross-Sectional Design
• Longitudinal Design
• Sequential Design

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Cross sectional design

• subjects are tested only once
• subjects are from different ages groups
• would tell us about age differences but not
  change over time
• Example 100 people (1/4 are 20, 1/4 are 30, 1/4
  are 40, 1/4 are 50) are given a one time survey
  about education.

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Cross-Sectional Diagram__________________________
______Time of Testing
1970 1980 1990 2000
1920 _ _ 70
1930 _ _ 60
1940 _ _ 50
1950 _ _ _ _
C O H O R T
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• Cross-Sectional Design __________________________
  ____
• Advantages
• Popular because they are relatively in-expensive,
  easier to manage less time time consuming.
• Avoid the problems of subject attrition (subjects
  dropping out of the study) and practice effects
  (subjects being repeatedly tested) that plague
  longitudinal studies

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• Cross-Sectional Design __________________________
  ____
• Disadvantages
• Drawbacks include the confounding of age and
  cohort differencesi.e. differences among the
  groups maybe due to their historical/
  environmental events and not because of
  development process.
• The results are thus contaminated by generational
  differences.

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Longitudinal design

• Follow the same subjects over time
• Allowing change or consistency to be evaluated
  within the same group
• Issues specific to Longitudinal Design
• Selective Attrition Drop-out
• Time of Measurement Effect

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Longitudinal Diagram_____________________________
___Time of Testing
C O H O R T
1970 1980 1990 2000
1920 50 60 70 _
1930 _ _ _ _
1940 _ _ _ _
1950 _ _ _ _
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• Longitudinal Design______________________________
  
• Advantages
• Provide a good picture of individual changes
  over time and developmental differences among
  individuals
• One can look for the long-term effect of earlier
  events, make predictions and observe outcomes and
  do retrospective analyses of developmental events
  to look for patterns

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• Longitudinal Design______________________________
  
• Disadvantages
• Time consuming expensive
• Subject attrition is a significant problem
  because if too many subjects drop out (due to
  disinterest, moving away, death and so on) the
  sample become less and less representative
• Failure to respond a survey is correlated with
  severe disability, institutionalization death
• Lead to bias in findings

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Sequential design

• A combination of Cross-sectional Longitudinal
• Five types of Sequential Design
• Time-lag
• Time-sequential treat age time as IV
• Cohort-sequential treat age cohort as IV
• Cross-sequential treat cohort and time as IV
• Panel studies

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Time-Lag Diagram________________________________
Time of Testing
1970 1980 1990 2000 2010
1920 50 _ _ _ _
1930 _ 50 _ _ _
1940 _ _ 50 _ _
1950 _ _ _ 50 _
1960 _ _ _ _ 50
C O H O R T
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Time-Sequential DiagramTime of Testing
1970 1980 1990 2000 2010
1920 _ _ 70 _ _
1930 _ _ 60 70 _
1940 _ _ 50 60 70
1950 _ _ _ 50 60
1960 _ _ _ _ 50
C O H O R T
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Cohort-Sequential DiagramTime of Testing
1970 1980 1990 2000 2010
1920 50 60 70 _ _
1930 _ 50 60 70 _
1940 _ _ 50 60 70
1950 _ _ _ _ _
1960 _ _ _ _ _
C O H O R T
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Cross-Sequential DiagramTime of Testing
1970 1980 1990 2000 2010
1920 _ 60 70 80 _
1930 _ 50 60 70 _
1940 _ 40 50 60 _
1950 _ _ _ _ _
1960 _ _ _ _ _
C O H O R T
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Panel DiagramTime of Testing
1970 1980 1980 1980 1990 2000 2000 2010
1920 _ 60 60 60 _ _ _ _
1930 _ 50 50 50 70 _ _ _
1940 _ 40 40 40 60 80 80 _
1950 _ _ _ _ 50 70 70 _
1960 _ _ _ _ _ 60 60 _
Same individuals over time Same individuals over time Same individuals over time
C O H O R T
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• Sequential Design____________________________
• Advantages
• combine some strengths of both the cross
  sectional and longitudinal approaches, while at
  the same time attempting to minimize the
  confounding of age, cohort and time of
  measurement influences
• provide greater internal validity than either the
  traditional single-cohort longitudinal or the
  single-time-measurement cross-sectional designs
• Represent an important contribution of adult dev.
  To research in developmental psychological

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• Sequential Design____________________________
• Disadvantages
• Its too expensive and need high commitment
• The complexity has probably hindered their
  widespread use to date

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• Time-Lag Design____________________________
• Advantages
• Provides a picture of the effects of
  sociohistorical change at a particular point in
  development
• we see how the same age group behaves in
  different historical periods and contexts

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• Time-Lag Design____________________________
• Disadvantages
• cohort and time-of-measurement influences are
  confounded
• expensive and time consuming
• Only one age is studied