1. Research in developmental psychology

Question 1

The study of developmental psychology must
both 1.____ and 2. ____ development in
children’s behaviour 3. ____ ____

Answer 1

1. Describe
2. Explain
3. Over time

Question 2

What are 5 themes in developmental psychology?

Answer 2

1. Nature and nurture
2. Individual differences
3. The active child
4. (Dis)continuity of development and critical periods
5. Socio-cultural context

Question 3

How do the following study designs measure development?
1. Cross-sectional design
- Compare children of ____ ages at a ____ time
2. Longitudinal design
- Compare children to ____.
- Children are examined ____ over a ____ period (over ____ or ____)
3. Microgenetic design
- Children are observed ____ over a relatively ____ period.
- A ____ occurs within this short period

Answer 3

1. Different, single
2. Themselves, repeatedly, prolonged, months, years
3. Intensively, short, change

Question 4

What are two pros and two cons of cross-sectional designs?

Answer 4

PROS:
1. Faster and cheaper to collect data
2. Can identify differences between age groups
CONS:
1. Uninformative about (dis)continuity of development
over age (e.g. stability of wellbeing)
2. Uninformative about individual differences (within a cohort)

Question 5

What are two pros and three cons of longitudinal designs?

Answer 5

PROS:
1. You can watch development unfold
2. Can examine the stability of individual differences over time and individual patterns of change
CONS:
1. Practice effects
2. Attrition (drop out) rates and bias
3. Takes a long time and a lot of
resources – worth doing?

Question 6

What are two pros and three cons of micro genetic designs?

Answer 6

PROS:
1. Very detailed
2. Intensive observation can
clarify process of change
as it occurs
CONS:
1. Must know when change will occur
2. No long term data about change patterns
3. Narrow in focus

Question 7

Genetically informative designs allow us to estimate (and in some cases ____) ____ contributions to ____

Answer 7

Locate, genetic, development

Question 8

What are six types of genetically informative designs?

Answer 8

1. Twin studies
2. Adoption
3. Adopted twins
4. DNA sequencing
5. Molecular-genetic
6. Genomewide scan

Question 9

What are three common data collection contexts?
Give a pro of each of these contexts.

Answer 9

1. Interview/questionnaire - Inexpensive way to gather self-reports, Clinical interviews allow for flexibility to respond to unexpected answers
2. Naturalistic observation - Useful for describing behaviour and exploring social interaction
3. Structured observation/tasks - Allows controlled comparisons

Question 10

What are five practical problems with participatory techniques?

Answer 10

1. Gaining access and seeking consent
2. Context/location
3. Data collection
4. Confidentiality and child protection issues
5. Debriefing and rewards

Question 11

Define reliability

Answer 11

The degree to which
independent measurements of a behaviour are consistent

Question 12

What are two kinds of reliability?

Answer 12

1. Inter-rater reliability
2. Test-retest reliability

Question 13

What is meant by construct validity?

Answer 13

Who is to say that what researchers are measuring even exists?