Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-t7fkt Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-06T10:20:21.984Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Foreword: Understanding and Enhancing Human Development Among Global Youth – On the Unique Value of Developmentally Oriented Longitudinal Research

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 January 2022

Prerna Banati
Affiliation:
UNICEF
Get access

Summary

The goal of developmental science is to describe, explain and optimize within-person change and between-people differences in within-person change across the life span (ontogeny) (Lerner, 2018). As such, repeated assessments of individuals across x-axis (temporal) divisions is the sine qua non of the essential features of developmental science research. In other words, to fulfil the goal of developmental science, longitudinal designs are required to obtain evidence contributing to understanding or to enhancing ontogenetic change (Collins, 2006). However, measuring one or more individuals at two or more successive ontogenetic points is a necessary but insufficient basis for developmental longitudinal research.

As is documented by the chapters across this volume, repeated measures must be taken at points of ontogeny for which there is a theoretical basis for expecting these measures (1) to assess changing features of (that is, variational or, ideally, transformational tipping points in) the process of development and/or (2) to constitute optimal ontogenetic points in which to enact interventions to enhance the course of developmental change. As is now understood by increasing numbers of developmental scientists, the development process involves relations between attributes of the individual and features of their tiered social, institutional, physical and cultural ecology, an ecology that changes integratively across history (for example, Bronfenbrenner and Morris, 2006; Elder et al, 2015; Overton, 2015).

Moreover, the developmental relations between an individual and the context are not independent. Contemporary theories of human development which emphasize that individual–context relations are mutually influential, represented most often in the literature as individual↔context relations, are at the cutting-edge of developmental science (Dick and Muller, 2017; Lerner, 2015, 2018). The individual–context relations depicted in these models involve dynamic and systematic relations across time and place (Elder et al, 2015). Dynamic models of human development processes require developmentally oriented longitudinal research to be tested.

The chapters in this volume both reflect and expand the theoretical, methodological and empirical foundations of this relational, dynamic developmental systems approach to using longitudinal methods to describe, explain and optimize the ontogenetic development of diverse global youth. Indeed, the chapters portray the ways in which developmentally oriented longitudinal research is uniquely suited to illuminate the features of both individuals and contexts that must be integratively studied to actualize the health and sustainable development of young people.

Type
Chapter
Information
Sustainable Human Development across the Life Course
Evidence from Longitudinal Research
, pp. xxvii - xxxiv
Publisher: Bristol University Press
Print publication year: 2021

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×