Matching methods such as nearest neighbor propensity score matching are increasingly popular techniques for controlling confounding in nonexperimental studies. However, simple k:1 matching methods, which select k well-matched comparison individuals for each treated individual, are sometimes criticized for being overly restrictive and discarding…

In this article, the authors aim to make accessible the careful application of a method called instrumental variables (IV). Under the right analytic conditions, IV is one promising strategy for answering questions about the causal nature of associations and, in so doing, can advance developmental theory. The authors build on prior work combining…

Multiple methods are vital to understanding development as a dynamic, transactional process. This article focuses on the ways in which quantitative and qualitative methodologies can be combined to enrich developmental science and the study of human development, focusing on the practical questions of "when" and "how." Research situations that may…

Peer interactions among children have long interested social scientists. Identifying causal peer effects is difficult, and a number of studies have used random assignment to produce evidence that peers affect each other's outcomes. This focus by sociologists and economists on whether peers affect each other has not been matched by direct evidence…

There are a number of significant challenges researchers encounter when studying development over an extended period of time, including subject attrition, the changing of measurement structures across groups and developmental periods, and the need to invest substantial time and money. Integrative data analysis is an emerging set of methodologies…

This article reviews the premises of configural frequency analysis (CFA), including methods of choosing significance tests and base models, as well as protecting [alpha], and discusses why CFA is a useful approach when conducting longitudinal person-oriented research. CFA operates at the manifest variable level. Longitudinal CFA seeks to identify…

A central theme of research on human development and psychopathology is whether a therapeutic intervention or a turning-point event, such as a family break-up, alters the trajectory of the behavior under study. This article describes and applies a method for using observational longitudinal data to make more transparent causal inferences about the…

This study examines the effects of kindergarten retention on children's social-emotional development in the early, middle, and late elementary years. Previous studies have generated mixed results partly due to some major methodological challenges, including selection bias, measurement error, and divergent perceptions of multiple respondents in…

The set of statistical methods available to developmentalists is continually being expanded, allowing for questions about change over time to be addressed in new, informative ways. Indeed, new developments in methods to model change over time create the possibility for new research questions to be posed. Latent transition analysis, a longitudinal…

Parent and teacher data for 14,990 children from the National Longitudinal Survey of Children and Youth were used in multilevel analyses to examine the relationship between ethnicity, children's aggression and emotional problems, and parenting. Using parent and teacher report, relationships between ethnicity and child behavior were present but…

Developmental research often involves studying change across 2 or more processes or constructs simultaneously. A natural question in this work is whether change in these 2 processes is related or independent. Associative latent transition analysis (ALTA) was designed to test hypotheses about the degree to which change in 2 discrete latent…

This article presents an overview of quantitative methodologies for the study of stage-sequential development based on extensions of Markov chain modeling. Four methods are presented that exemplify the flexibility of this approach: the manifest Markov model, the latent Markov model, latent transition analysis, and the mixture latent Markov model.…

Model-based cluster analysis is a new clustering procedure to investigate population heterogeneity utilizing finite mixture multivariate normal densities. It is an inferentially based, statistically principled procedure that allows comparison of nonnested models using the Bayesian information criterion to compare multiple models and identify the…

In 2 studies, the authors explored preadolescent and adolescent use of personal homepages in relation to mastery and identity formation. In Study 1, the authors attempted to determine the prevalence of personal homepage and online journal (blog) construction among a random sample (N = 500) of preadolescents and adolescents. Adolescents were more…

Theory of mind is claimed to develop universally among humans across cultures with vastly different folk psychologies. However, in the attempt to test and confirm a claim of universality, individual studies have been limited by small sample sizes, sample specificities, and an overwhelming focus on Anglo-European children. The current meta-analysis…