Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Developmental Research Methods 5th Edition Ebook PDF
Developmental Research Methods 5th Edition Ebook PDF
FOR INFORMATION
E-mail: order@sagepub.com
1 Oliver’s Yard
55 City Road
United Kingdom
India
3 Church Street
Description: Fifth edition. | Thousand Oaks : SAGE, [2018] | Includes bibliographical references
and index.
This book is intended for anyone who wants to learn more about how to do
research in developmental psychology. It does not teach everything about
how to do research—no book could. But it does, I hope, provide a helpful
basis, a set of guidelines and principles that can aid in both the execution
of one’s own research and the evaluation of the research of others.
Organization and Emphases
I have tried to strike a balance between the general and the specific. This
balance is reflected in the book’s organization: an initial 11 chapters that
discuss general matters of research methodology, followed by four
(somewhat lengthier) chapters devoted to specific research topics in
developmental psychology. The balance is also reflected in the approach
that is taken to discussing research. This book is neither an abstract
“design and analysis” treatise on the one hand, nor a cookbook of hands-on
exercises on the other. It is written instead to reflect the way that I believe
most of us actually go about doing research—to convey an appreciation of
the issues that must be addressed, the decisions that must be made, and the
obstacles that must be overcome at every phase in a research project. I
hope that the book captures something of both the excitement and the
challenge of doing good research on topics that really do matter.
The primary audience for this book will doubtless come from laboratory
or research methods courses in developmental or child psychology. I have
assumed that any student in such courses will have had at least one prior
course in developmental or child psychology. Other kinds of course work
(e.g., statistics, general research methods) would be helpful but are not
necessary. With suitable adjustments by the instructor, the book should be
appropriate for both advanced undergraduates and beginning graduate
students.
New to This Edition
This edition differs in a number of ways from the previous edition of the
book. A number of topics have been added; among the topics new to this
edition are emotional development; bullying; early forms of moral
understanding; and the study of the oldest old, the population of
centenarians. Even when the topics remain the same, the discussion has
been thoroughly updated; close to 400 references are new to the current
edition.
For the most part, the chapter divisions and the sequence of chapters are
the same as in the fourth edition of the book. I realize that different
instructors organize this material in different ways, and indeed I have used
different approaches myself over my years of teaching methods courses
and across previous editions of this book. Although the different chapters
are of course linked, to a good extent each is also a stand-alone unit. Thus
the chapters—and often even particular sections within them—can be
assigned in any order that an instructor prefers.
I am grateful to many people for various kinds of help during the writing
of this edition of the book. General support was provided by the
Department of Psychology, University of Florida. I thank Ira Fischler for
advice on IRB issues, James Algina for his help with my numerous
statistical questions, Gabriella Mauro for assistance with the references,
and Ted Walls for his helpful suggestions with regard to the revision.
Finally, I am grateful for the help and support provided by the editorial
team at Sage: Lara Parra, Kelly DeRosa, Zachary Valladon, Mark Bast, and
Katherine Hepburn. Among their services was the recruitment of an
outstanding group of reviewers, to whom I express my gratitude.
—Scott A. Miller
Scott A. Miller
is Professor Emeritus in the Department of Psychology at the
University of Florida. He was a faculty member in Psychology at the
University of Michigan prior to joining the University of Florida’s
Psychology Department. Dr. Miller is a member of the Cognitive
Development Society, the Jean Piaget Society, and the Society for
Research in Child Development and a Fellow of the American
Psychological Association and the Association for Psychological
Science. His research has examined various aspects of cognitive
development in young children, and his current research focus is on
the development of theory of mind during the preschool and grade-
school years. In addition to Developmental Research Methods, other
books that he has authored or coauthored include Cognitive
Development (2002), Child Psychology (2008), Theory of Mind:
Beyond the Preschool Years (2012), Writing in Psychology (2014),
and Parenting and Theory of Mind (2016).
Chapter 1 Introduction
If you have penetrated very far in your study of psychology, you are aware
that the field consists of multiple subareas or specializations. Indeed, a glance
at the table of contents of any introductory psychology book will reveal this
diversity, with chapters devoted to perception, cognition, personality, and a
dozen or so other to pics as well. Each topic addresses questions of
importance to psychology as a whole, which, of course, is why the different
subareas exist.
Each topic also has its special fascinations for those who have made it their
object of study. Although any psychologist appreciates the importance of the
field’s many subareas, probably most believe that their own specialization is
especially interesting and important. Why else would they devote a career to
its study?
Such questions are not only of scientific interest. More obviously than any
other branch of the field, developmental psychology speaks to issues that
make a difference in the lives of everyone. Consider again some of the
questions posed in the preceding paragraph. The issue of early experience and
later development may be a fascinating scientific problem for the researcher,
but it is a matter of urgent practical importance for any parent concerned with
the optimal development of his or her children. That people differ in
intelligence may raise a number of intriguing theoretical questions, but this
fact also has enormous interpersonal and societal consequences. One of the
exciting things about being a developmental psychologist is this feeling that
one is dealing with questions that really matter.
Answers to such questions do not come easily, however. Indeed, it often seems
that the most basic and important questions are the hardest to resolve. The
difficulty of doing good research is a continuing theme throughout the book
and hence need not be documented here. But let us briefly consider one
example to introduce some general points. It is a problem that has already
been touched on twice: drawing a relation between parental child-rearing
practices and child development. How might we study this problem
scientifically?
Needless to say, the research program just outlined is the stuff of science
fiction (or of methods textbooks), not fact. We do not have experiments of
this sort, and it is to be hoped that we never will. In this case the ethical
problems are clearly sufficient to prohibit the research. If they were not, the
practical difficulties in actually carrying out such studies would be
staggering. These two factors—ethical limitations and practical constraints—
act to rule out many well-designed, “textbook-like” experiments that any
developmental psychologist could easily dream up. The result is that we have
to fall back on less scientifically satisfactory methods of gathering the desired
information. That such methods do exist, and that they lead to genuine gains
in knowledge, is another continuing theme. But the appropriate methods and
the resulting knowledge often do not come easily. As two veteran
developmental researchers note, “The study of human development in all its
richness, dynamism, and contextual variation is not rocket science—it is
actually far more challenging” (Damon & Lerner, 2008, p. xi).
The main points of the discussion thus far are easy to summarize.
Developmental psychology addresses questions that are of both great
scientific and great practical importance. Studying such questions is often
very difficult, and these difficulties place serious constraints on what can be
known. Nevertheless, methods of study do exist, and gains in knowledge are
being made literally every day. What we have, then, is a field of study in
which the potential benefits of research are great, the challenges to successful
study formidable, and the progress in knowledge slow but meaningful—in
short, an ideal place for an ambitious researcher.
Goals of the Book
This book has three general goals. The first and most obvious is to help
promote the skills necessary to do good research in developmental
psychology. To this end, principles and precepts of various sorts are presented.
Some of these principles are specific to issues of development; others are
more general to the field of psychology. Some, indeed, are not even specific
to psychology but reflect applications of the general scientific method.
Whenever possible, however, I embed the discussion within the context of
developmental issues. And, as already suggested, developmental psychology
presents enough methodological problems of its own to challenge any
researcher.
The third goal is to foster skills necessary for critically evaluating research
and the conclusions that can be drawn from research. Such skills, of course,
are not separate from those needed to carry out studies, but most of us are
likely to use them far more often. Not everyone is going to do research in
developmental psychology, but everyone is a consumer of the results of such
research. Consider again some of the practical issues for which research in
developmental psychology is relevant. Is physical punishment ever justified
when disciplining children, or should such techniques be avoided altogether?
Does violence on TV or in video games promote aggression in children?
Should early enrichment programs be provided for children at risk for school
failure? Are mandatory retirement ages ever justified, and if so, for what
kinds of occupations? And what sort of research programs, if any, should the
federal government support? Questions such as these are of interest to every
parent, taxpayer, or voter. Intelligent answers to the questions are most likely
if one knows the conclusions that have been drawn from relevant research.
Intelligent answers are even more likely if one knows the methodology
behind the research and can sensibly weigh the various strengths, weaknesses,
and uncertainties when evaluating the conclusions.
Steps in a Research Program
What are the things that must go right in the course of a study if the final
product is to be an increment in knowledge? The answer is quite a number of
things, most of which are discussed at length in later sections. The purpose of
the present section is simply to provide an introductory orientation to the
skills necessary to do good research—a brief overview and a preview of
topics to come.
The starting point for any successful program of research is good ideas. This
is at once the most obvious and the least teachable of the various
requirements. Because it is both obvious and difficult to teach, the criterion of
good ideas tends to be neglected in discussions of how to do research, the
focus instead being on the skills necessary to implement whatever ideas one
may have. This neglect will hold true here as well. It is important to
remember, however, that all the technical skill in the world will not save a
study if the ideas behind it are not any good. It is important to realize too that
the really important differences among researchers—the factors that separate
the average researcher from the one whose research shakes the field—lie less
in the technical skill with which they execute studies than in their abilities to
think in truly original and penetrating ways about an issue.
The difficulty of teaching how to generate good ideas does not mean that no
such attempts exist. Among the sources worth exploring are Cone and Foster
(2006), Gray and Wegner (2013), Joireman and Van Lang (2015), Leong and
Muccio (2006), and McGuire (1997). Two general points emerge from such
discussions. One is that ideas can have many sources; McGuire identifies 49
heuristics for generating ideas, and Leong and Muccio discuss four general
approaches (personal strategies, interpersonal strategies, printed sources,
computer strategies), each with multiple entries. The other point is the
necessity of not only generating but also evaluating ideas. An original idea is
a necessary starting point for research, but it is not sufficient. The idea must
be one that can be successfully implemented, and it must be one that has the
potential to add to what is known about some topic of interest.
The point about evaluating one’s ideas can serve as a transition to the second
criterion for successful research: knowledge of past work. Indeed, this step
might logically be listed as the first, because really good ideas probably
cannot be generated without knowledge of what has gone before. In any case,
knowledge of the literature is essential when researchers come to evaluate
just how testworthy their ideas are. There is little point in executing a brilliant
idea for a study if someone else has already done the same thing. More
common, perhaps, is the case in which certain important points of procedure
would have been decided differently if the researcher had only known about
similar work by others. Few things can be more depressing to an investigator
than going to all the effort of carrying out a study and only then learning that
the findings of some earlier study render the effort pointless.
Another valuable aid to literature searches are the various books and journals
devoted to review articles on major topics. Table 1.2 lists and briefly
describes some of the most helpful of these sources. Table 1.3 provides a list
of some of the major empirical journals that publish research in
developmental psychology. It is good practice to scan the most recent
volumes of these journals before making a final decision about procedures.
Note that all journals are now available in electronic form (indeed, some only
in electronic form), and most university libraries have subscriptions to the
major journals in the field. Finally, the best guide to past work may often
come not from written sources but from consultations with an experienced
researcher in the field. And bibliographic assistance aside, discussing one’s
ideas with others is generally a helpful part of the problem-solving process.
I will make one more point, one that I draw from Cone and Foster (2006).
These authors note that some students suffer from the “Nobel laureate
error”—namely the belief that any study they design must be the definitive
study that addresses and answers all the questions of interest. In fact, no study
ever does this. Science is a cumulative enterprise, and hundreds or even
thousands of studies may contribute to what we know about the major topics
in the field. To add to this literature, a new study does not have to do
everything; it merely has to do something of interest that has not been done
before. Table 1.4 presents my own listing of some of the ways in which a
study can go beyond what is already known. The table includes several
concepts not yet discussed and thus may not be completely comprehensible at
this point; it is intended simply as a preliminary guide that can be returned to
as needed.
Note. From Writing in Psychology (p. 33) by S. A. Miller, 2014, New York, NY: Routledge.
Copyright 2014 by Routledge. Reprinted with permission.
Once the ideas for the study have been generated, the next step is to translate
them into an adequate experimental design. It was suggested earlier that a
technically perfect design is of little value if the ideas being tested do not
merit study. I now add the converse point: that a brilliant idea may come to
nothing if it cannot be embodied in a scientifically testable form. Matters of
experimental design are a central topic in the coming chapters. For now, two
points can be made. The first is a reiteration of a point made earlier. Very
often in developmental psychology, ethical or practical constraints rule out
research designs that, from a purely scientific point of view, would be ideal
for studying an issue. The challenge then becomes to devise alternative
procedures that can lead to valid conclusions. The second point is that designs
in developmental psychology are often complicated by the fact that age is
included as a variable of primary interest. As we will see later, age is in some
ways an especially difficult variable with which to work. But, of course,
changes with age are of great interest for most developmental psychologists.
Our hypothetical researchers have now reached the point at which they have
an idea for a study, have surveyed the relevant literature, and have decided (at
least tentatively) on an experimental design. The next step is to seek human
subjects approval for the research—that is, to submit a proposal to the
university committee responsible for monitoring the ethical conduct of
research. Ethics is the subject of Chapter 10, and there will be much to say
then about both procedures to follow and criteria to consider when evaluating
ethics. For now, I settle for one basic point—the need for independent
determination of the ethics of research. Researchers must, of course, do
everything possible to ensure that their own research projects are ethical.
They may not make this decision alone, however; rather, research can proceed
only after an independent committee has been satisfied that the research is
ethically sound.
Note. Adapted from Writing in Psychology (p. 75) by S. A. Miller, 2014, New York, NY:
Routledge. Copyright 2014 by Routledge. Reprinted with permission.
Although the next step is not a necessary one in all research projects, in
particular cases it may be essential. It is to carry out a pilot study—that is, to
do some preliminary testing and practicing before beginning the experiment
proper. There are two general reasons for pilot testing, both of which may be
especially important in work with children. One reason is to give the tester
practice in working with the particular procedures and subject groups, the
goal being to minimize experimenter error once the real study starts. The
second is to test out any uncertain aspects of the procedure to make certain
that they work as intended. Are the instructions clear? Is the test session a
reasonable length? Is a particular experimental manipulation convincing? The
actual questions will vary from project to project, but the general issue is the
same: Is the study ready to go?
Assuming a positive answer to the ready-to-go question, the next step is again
an obvious one: obtaining research participants. Obvious though this step
may seem, it is not discussed in many textbooks on methodology, in which
experimental designs somehow magically eventuate in data without the messy
intermediate step of finding people on whom to try them (but see Streiner &
Sidani, 2010, for an exception). In fact, many researchers spend a good
portion of their professional careers not in the interesting business of thinking
up research, but in the much more tedious business of finding participants
with whom to do the research. This situation is especially true for
developmental psychologists, who do not have readily available populations
such as college sophomores or laboratory rats with which to work.
Researchers of infancy cannot post sign-up sheets on which babies can
volunteer for experiments; they must somehow locate parents with infants
and induce them to bring their babies in for testing. The researcher who
wishes to study large samples of 5-, 7-, and 9-year-olds will almost certainly
need to work through a school system to find sufficient numbers to test (for
helpful suggestions about how to do so, see Alibali & Nathan, 2010). The
investigator of possible changes in functioning with old age will need to
locate and recruit older participants, possibly through contacts with various
organizations that serve older people. All of these groups can present special
problems of access.
I see increasing reason to believe that the view formed some time
back as to the origin of the Makonde bush is the correct one. I have
no doubt that it is not a natural product, but the result of human
occupation. Those parts of the high country where man—as a very
slight amount of practice enables the eye to perceive at once—has not
yet penetrated with axe and hoe, are still occupied by a splendid
timber forest quite able to sustain a comparison with our mixed
forests in Germany. But wherever man has once built his hut or tilled
his field, this horrible bush springs up. Every phase of this process
may be seen in the course of a couple of hours’ walk along the main
road. From the bush to right or left, one hears the sound of the axe—
not from one spot only, but from several directions at once. A few
steps further on, we can see what is taking place. The brush has been
cut down and piled up in heaps to the height of a yard or more,
between which the trunks of the large trees stand up like the last
pillars of a magnificent ruined building. These, too, present a
melancholy spectacle: the destructive Makonde have ringed them—
cut a broad strip of bark all round to ensure their dying off—and also
piled up pyramids of brush round them. Father and son, mother and
son-in-law, are chopping away perseveringly in the background—too
busy, almost, to look round at the white stranger, who usually excites
so much interest. If you pass by the same place a week later, the piles
of brushwood have disappeared and a thick layer of ashes has taken
the place of the green forest. The large trees stretch their
smouldering trunks and branches in dumb accusation to heaven—if
they have not already fallen and been more or less reduced to ashes,
perhaps only showing as a white stripe on the dark ground.
This work of destruction is carried out by the Makonde alike on the
virgin forest and on the bush which has sprung up on sites already
cultivated and deserted. In the second case they are saved the trouble
of burning the large trees, these being entirely absent in the
secondary bush.
After burning this piece of forest ground and loosening it with the
hoe, the native sows his corn and plants his vegetables. All over the
country, he goes in for bed-culture, which requires, and, in fact,
receives, the most careful attention. Weeds are nowhere tolerated in
the south of German East Africa. The crops may fail on the plains,
where droughts are frequent, but never on the plateau with its
abundant rains and heavy dews. Its fortunate inhabitants even have
the satisfaction of seeing the proud Wayao and Wamakua working
for them as labourers, driven by hunger to serve where they were
accustomed to rule.
But the light, sandy soil is soon exhausted, and would yield no
harvest the second year if cultivated twice running. This fact has
been familiar to the native for ages; consequently he provides in
time, and, while his crop is growing, prepares the next plot with axe
and firebrand. Next year he plants this with his various crops and
lets the first piece lie fallow. For a short time it remains waste and
desolate; then nature steps in to repair the destruction wrought by
man; a thousand new growths spring out of the exhausted soil, and
even the old stumps put forth fresh shoots. Next year the new growth
is up to one’s knees, and in a few years more it is that terrible,
impenetrable bush, which maintains its position till the black
occupier of the land has made the round of all the available sites and
come back to his starting point.
The Makonde are, body and soul, so to speak, one with this bush.
According to my Yao informants, indeed, their name means nothing
else but “bush people.” Their own tradition says that they have been
settled up here for a very long time, but to my surprise they laid great
stress on an original immigration. Their old homes were in the
south-east, near Mikindani and the mouth of the Rovuma, whence
their peaceful forefathers were driven by the continual raids of the
Sakalavas from Madagascar and the warlike Shirazis[47] of the coast,
to take refuge on the almost inaccessible plateau. I have studied
African ethnology for twenty years, but the fact that changes of
population in this apparently quiet and peaceable corner of the earth
could have been occasioned by outside enterprises taking place on
the high seas, was completely new to me. It is, no doubt, however,
correct.
The charming tribal legend of the Makonde—besides informing us
of other interesting matters—explains why they have to live in the
thickest of the bush and a long way from the edge of the plateau,
instead of making their permanent homes beside the purling brooks
and springs of the low country.
“The place where the tribe originated is Mahuta, on the southern
side of the plateau towards the Rovuma, where of old time there was
nothing but thick bush. Out of this bush came a man who never
washed himself or shaved his head, and who ate and drank but little.
He went out and made a human figure from the wood of a tree
growing in the open country, which he took home to his abode in the
bush and there set it upright. In the night this image came to life and
was a woman. The man and woman went down together to the
Rovuma to wash themselves. Here the woman gave birth to a still-
born child. They left that place and passed over the high land into the
valley of the Mbemkuru, where the woman had another child, which
was also born dead. Then they returned to the high bush country of
Mahuta, where the third child was born, which lived and grew up. In
course of time, the couple had many more children, and called
themselves Wamatanda. These were the ancestral stock of the
Makonde, also called Wamakonde,[48] i.e., aborigines. Their
forefather, the man from the bush, gave his children the command to
bury their dead upright, in memory of the mother of their race who
was cut out of wood and awoke to life when standing upright. He also
warned them against settling in the valleys and near large streams,
for sickness and death dwelt there. They were to make it a rule to
have their huts at least an hour’s walk from the nearest watering-
place; then their children would thrive and escape illness.”
The explanation of the name Makonde given by my informants is
somewhat different from that contained in the above legend, which I
extract from a little book (small, but packed with information), by
Pater Adams, entitled Lindi und sein Hinterland. Otherwise, my
results agree exactly with the statements of the legend. Washing?
Hapana—there is no such thing. Why should they do so? As it is, the
supply of water scarcely suffices for cooking and drinking; other
people do not wash, so why should the Makonde distinguish himself
by such needless eccentricity? As for shaving the head, the short,
woolly crop scarcely needs it,[49] so the second ancestral precept is
likewise easy enough to follow. Beyond this, however, there is
nothing ridiculous in the ancestor’s advice. I have obtained from
various local artists a fairly large number of figures carved in wood,
ranging from fifteen to twenty-three inches in height, and
representing women belonging to the great group of the Mavia,
Makonde, and Matambwe tribes. The carving is remarkably well
done and renders the female type with great accuracy, especially the
keloid ornamentation, to be described later on. As to the object and
meaning of their works the sculptors either could or (more probably)
would tell me nothing, and I was forced to content myself with the
scanty information vouchsafed by one man, who said that the figures
were merely intended to represent the nembo—the artificial
deformations of pelele, ear-discs, and keloids. The legend recorded
by Pater Adams places these figures in a new light. They must surely
be more than mere dolls; and we may even venture to assume that
they are—though the majority of present-day Makonde are probably
unaware of the fact—representations of the tribal ancestress.
The references in the legend to the descent from Mahuta to the
Rovuma, and to a journey across the highlands into the Mbekuru
valley, undoubtedly indicate the previous history of the tribe, the
travels of the ancestral pair typifying the migrations of their
descendants. The descent to the neighbouring Rovuma valley, with
its extraordinary fertility and great abundance of game, is intelligible
at a glance—but the crossing of the Lukuledi depression, the ascent
to the Rondo Plateau and the descent to the Mbemkuru, also lie
within the bounds of probability, for all these districts have exactly
the same character as the extreme south. Now, however, comes a
point of especial interest for our bacteriological age. The primitive
Makonde did not enjoy their lives in the marshy river-valleys.
Disease raged among them, and many died. It was only after they
had returned to their original home near Mahuta, that the health
conditions of these people improved. We are very apt to think of the
African as a stupid person whose ignorance of nature is only equalled
by his fear of it, and who looks on all mishaps as caused by evil
spirits and malignant natural powers. It is much more correct to
assume in this case that the people very early learnt to distinguish
districts infested with malaria from those where it is absent.
This knowledge is crystallized in the
ancestral warning against settling in the
valleys and near the great waters, the
dwelling-places of disease and death. At the
same time, for security against the hostile
Mavia south of the Rovuma, it was enacted
that every settlement must be not less than a
certain distance from the southern edge of the
plateau. Such in fact is their mode of life at the
present day. It is not such a bad one, and
certainly they are both safer and more
comfortable than the Makua, the recent
intruders from the south, who have made USUAL METHOD OF
good their footing on the western edge of the CLOSING HUT-DOOR
plateau, extending over a fairly wide belt of
country. Neither Makua nor Makonde show in their dwellings
anything of the size and comeliness of the Yao houses in the plain,
especially at Masasi, Chingulungulu and Zuza’s. Jumbe Chauro, a
Makonde hamlet not far from Newala, on the road to Mahuta, is the
most important settlement of the tribe I have yet seen, and has fairly
spacious huts. But how slovenly is their construction compared with
the palatial residences of the elephant-hunters living in the plain.
The roofs are still more untidy than in the general run of huts during
the dry season, the walls show here and there the scanty beginnings
or the lamentable remains of the mud plastering, and the interior is a
veritable dog-kennel; dirt, dust and disorder everywhere. A few huts
only show any attempt at division into rooms, and this consists
merely of very roughly-made bamboo partitions. In one point alone
have I noticed any indication of progress—in the method of fastening
the door. Houses all over the south are secured in a simple but
ingenious manner. The door consists of a set of stout pieces of wood
or bamboo, tied with bark-string to two cross-pieces, and moving in
two grooves round one of the door-posts, so as to open inwards. If
the owner wishes to leave home, he takes two logs as thick as a man’s
upper arm and about a yard long. One of these is placed obliquely
against the middle of the door from the inside, so as to form an angle
of from 60° to 75° with the ground. He then places the second piece
horizontally across the first, pressing it downward with all his might.
It is kept in place by two strong posts planted in the ground a few
inches inside the door. This fastening is absolutely safe, but of course
cannot be applied to both doors at once, otherwise how could the
owner leave or enter his house? I have not yet succeeded in finding
out how the back door is fastened.