Child Development From Infancy to Adolescence. Laura E. Levine
Educational Research Association recommend that important educational decisions never depend on a single test score.
T/F #8
Today over 900 colleges do not require the SAT or ACT for admission. True
Physiological Measures
Some questions can best be answered by examining the body’s response to different stimuli. A number of physiological measures help us get those answers. Table 2.4 summarizes some of the measures used and what they indicate.
Table 2.4
Sources: Dupler (2014), Sowden and Barrett (2006), UC San Diego Center for Functional MRI (2016).
MRIs and fMRIs. The MRI image (left) shows pictures of successive sections through the brain from the back to the front. The fMRI image (right) shows where the blood is flowing through the brain when the person thinks about an activity and actually does that activity.
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By using physiological measures, researchers have been able to understand more about the processes that underlie certain behaviors. For example, fMRI has been used to examine normal developmental changes in how the brain functions (Long, Benischek, Dewey, & Lebel, 2017). These findings will help us understand what happens when brain development results in conditions such as ADHD and autism. Research using fMRIs to scan the brains of children diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder has found that the part of the brain that controls face recognition is underactive in these children (Lynn et al., 2016). As you may know, children with autism often do not make eye contact with others and show little or no interest in social relationships. You will learn more about how autism spectrum disorder can be diagnosed in infants and how it is expressed in young children in Chapters 5 and 8.
Because physiological measures enable us to measure what is going on inside an individual without needing to rely on verbal communication, they have been particularly important in research involving infants and young children who can’t understand or answer questions because they either are not yet verbal or their language ability is limited. Another advantage is that physiological responses are not under the conscious control of the individual, so they cannot easily be faked or presented in a way intended to make them socially desirable (Blascovich, 2004). Also, most of these measures are noninvasive, meaning that nothing needs to be placed inside the body to collect the data. For instance, a type of cap with electrodes embedded in it can be used to record electrical brain activity with no discomfort to an infant who is wearing it.
Cortical measurement. This infant’s brain activity is being measured by means of a specially designed “electrode hat.” This noninvasive method of studying the brain has given us new insights into its functioning.
Oil Scarff/ Staff
Archival Records
Researchers don’t always collect their own data. They may use archival records, or data that were collected by others. For instance, a researcher might use historical diaries, letters, or photographs to gain insight into what childhood was like in the past. Data collected by the U.S. government provides an historical snapshot of many topics relevant for a developmental researcher, as do medical records and school records. However, because the researchers did not create the data, they have no control over the variables collected or the sample characteristics.
Archival records: Data collected at an earlier date that are subsequently used for research purposes.
Case Studies
A case study takes a comprehensive and intensive look at a single individual or a small group. Case studies have been used to investigate widely different research questions, such as the psychological challenges faced by a child with the severe mental disorder called psychosis (Green, Fazio-Griffith, & Parson, 2015), the challenges encountered by a blended family (Zeleznikow & Zeleznikow, 2015), and the coping mechanisms of an adolescent with HIV-positive parents (Lowe, 2007).
Case study: An in-depth study of a single individual or small group of individuals that uses multiple methods of study.
Because of the close relationship that can develop over time between the researcher and the subject of a case study, the researcher must strive to remain objective when making observations and interpreting data. Despite this challenge, case studies offer a rich and deep picture of development because they can bring together information from multiple sources using multiple methods, including interviews, observations, tests, and documents. Although we may not be able to generalize the findings to a broad cross-section of the population, case studies can be a rich source of new hypotheses that researchers can explore in the future with other more representative groups of individuals.
T/F #9
There is little scientific value in the study of single individuals. False
Ethnography
Ethnography is a research technique adapted from the field of anthropology in which a researcher lives with a group of people as a participant observer, taking part in the group’s everyday life while also observing and interviewing the people in the group. The primary goal of this approach is to use observations to understand how people make sense of their world and their experiences in it (Merriam, 2009). It is especially helpful when studying children in different cultures because it allows the researcher to see the whole context of the children’s development. For example, Sudhir Venkatesh (2008) wanted to administer questionnaires to gang members in inner city Chicago and ended up living among them for almost 10 years. This resulted in a rich account of their lives in a book titled Gang Leader for a Day: A Rogue Sociologist Takes to the Streets.
Ethnography: A qualitative research technique in which a researcher lives with a group of people as a participant observer, taking part in the group’s everyday life while observing and interviewing people in the group.
Although ethnographies give us an in-depth look at a cultural group from someone embedded in that group for an extended period of time, researchers must recognize that their presence may change the behavior of the group they are observing and their own biases may affect how they interpret what they see. A researcher’s personal safety could be placed in jeopardy in some research settings, and a considerable amount of time is needed to carry out this type of study.
Ethnography. This ethnographic researcher entered into the everyday life of this group of people to gain a rich picture of all aspects of their environment.
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