Research Methods in Adult Development and Aging FEM3102 Research Methods in Adult Development and Aging

THEORIES OF ADULT DEVELOPMENT Table 1 : Theoretical Approaches in Adult Development APPROACH WRITER’S APPROACH FOCUS TOPIC Behavior, social learning Bandura (1969, 1977) Seligman (1972) Learning Motivation Psychoanalysis Freud (1946) Erikson (1964, 1979) Personality Humanistic Maslow (1970) Kohlberg (1973, 1981) Moral development Intraindividual differences Cattel (1971), Horn (1980) Guilford, Zimmerman & Guildford (1976) Schaie (1977,1978) Intellectual development Attribution Whitbourne (1985) Self-esteem Social psychology Information processing Sternberg (1980) Learning, Memory Dialectic Riegel (1975, 1976) Personality, Life Crisis

Behavior, Social Learning This approach focus on the environment as an indicator of behavior & behavioral changes Reward and punishment will influence human behaviors. This approach considered role model which has emotional bond and can influence human behaviors.

Psychoanalysis Focuses on emotional conflict and unconscious mental process Emotional conflict is a result of social responsibilities or reality against individual desire Erikson – expanded psychoanalysis to adulthood psychosocial crisis in adulthood is intimacy conflict, productivity and integrity

Humanistic Focuses on motivation as the primary difference between human and animal. Emphasize on personal growth  self-actualization Humans will put the highest expectations to get the best outcome

Individual differences This approach is always used in psychology test for example intelligence test and personality test Each individual is different Information processing Can give explanations of older people’s memories and perceptions Human operation = computer

Attribution Labeling on events that happened in society This label can be attribution depending on types of label toward that events The individual will behave accordingly to the label of events that been given.

Dialectic focuses on changes and emphasizes on resolution and synthesis after individual face conflicting issues Individual is seen as an active organism  always face incongruent and conflicting situations and therefore increase higher level skills through revolution and synthesis to handle conflict.

Problem situation Leah and Sarah are both 75 years and are in fairly good health. They believe that their memory is not as good as it once was, so they both use various memory aids: Leah tries to think of images in her mind to remember her grocery list, whereas Sarah writes them down. Leah and Sarah got into a discussion recently about which technique works better.

Measuring adult development and aging Three approaches: Observing systematically Using tasks to sample behavior Asking people for self-reports Researchers must also ensure that the participants in the study are representative of the larger group of people in question.

Concepts in measuring development Reliability The extent to which it provides a consistent index of the behavior or topic of interest. Example: a measure of memory is reliable to the extent that it gives a consistent estimate of performance each time you administer it.

Concepts in measuring development Validity The extent to which it measures what researchers think it measures. Example: a measure of memory is valid if it can be shown to actually measure memory (and not vocabulary ability, for example) Often established by showing that the measure is in question is closely related to another measure known to be valid.

1. Systematic Observation Involves watching people and carefully recording what they say or do. Two forms of systematic observation: Naturalistic observation Structured observation

Naturalistic observation People are observed as they behave spontaneously in some real-life situations. Example: Leah and Sarah could be observed in the grocery store purchasing their items as a way to test how well they remember.

Structured observation Researchers create a setting that is particularly likely to elicit the behavior of interest. Especially useful to study behaviors that are difficult to observe naturally. Example: Emergency is a rare and an unpredictable event. Therefore, researchers can stage an emergency and observe how people react. However, whether the behaviors in staged situations are the same as in naturally occurring situations is difficult to determine. Therefore, it is difficult to generalize from staged setting to the real world.

2. Sampling behavior with tasks When investigators cannot directly observe certain behaviors, they create tasks that allow them to sample the behavior. Example: One way to test adults’ memory is to give them a list of items, perhaps a simulated grocery list, to learn and remember. This approach is popular because it is convenient. However, it has a problem with validity. How do you know what people do in real life situations when the list is actual items they need to purchase.

3. Self-reports A special case of using tasks to sample people’s behavior. Self-reports are simply people’s answers to questions about topic of interest. Written form: Questionnaire Verbal form: Interview Questions are created to probe different aspects about the topic of interest. Example: If you think imagery and lists are common ways people use to remember grocery items, you could devise a questionnaire and survey several people to find out.

3. Self-reports Self-reports are very convenient and provide information on the topic of interest. However self-report are not always good measure as they can be inaccurate. People may not always remember precisely what they did in the past, or they may report what they think the researcher wants to hear.

Representative sampling Researchers are normally interested in broad groups of people called populations. Example: FEM students taking FEM3102, the baby boomer generation. Almost all studies include only a sample of people, which is a subset of the population. Researchers must be careful to ensure that their sample is truly representative of the population of interest.

Representative sampling An unrepresentative sample can result in invalid research. Always critically evaluate the sample in a research and how the researchers generalize their findings.

General designs for research Primary designs for studying adult development and aging: Experimental studies Correlational studies Case studies

1. Experimental design An experiment involves manipulating a key factor that the researcher believes is responsible for a particular behavior and randomly assigning participants to the experimental and control groups. The researcher is most interested in identifying differences between two groups of people: Experimental group receives the manipulation Control group does not receive manipulation

The researcher exerts precise control over all important aspects of the study including the variable of interest, the setting and the participants. Researchers can infer cause-and-effect relations about variables due to systematic manipulation of key variables. Independent variables: variables manipulated by the experimenter. Dependent variables: behaviors or outcomes that are measured.

Age cannot be an independent variable because we cannot manipulate it. Therefore, we cannot conduct true experiments to examine the effects of age on a person’s behavior. At best, we can find age-related effects of an independent variable on dependent variables.

2. Correlational design In a correlational study, investigators examine relations between variables as they exist naturally in the world. In the simplest correlational study, a researcher measures two variables, then sees how they are related. The results of a correlational study usually are measured by computing a correlation coefficent (r).

Correlational studies do not imply cause-and-effect relations. Correlations can range from - 1.0 to 1.0, reflecting three different types of relations between the two variables: When r = 0, the two variables are unrelated. When r > 0, the variables are positively related. When r < 0, the variables are inversely related. Correlational studies do not imply cause-and-effect relations. However they do provide important information about the strength of the relation between variables (reflected in the absolute value of the correlation coefficient).

Correlational techniques are used a great deal because developmental researchers are interested in how variables are related to factors that are very difficult, if not impossible, to manipulate. Most developmental research is correlational at some level because age cannot be manipulated within an individual. This means we can describe many developmental phenomena, but we can only explain some of them.

3. Case study design Used when researchers cannot obtain measures directly from people and are able only to watch them carefully. In certain situations, researchers may be able to study a single individual in great detail in a case study. Case study is especially useful when researchers want to investigate a rare phenomena, such as uncommon diseases or people with extremely high ability.

Case studies are also useful for opening new areas of study which can be followed by larger studies using other methods (e.g. experiments). The primary limitation of this method is whether the findings from one individual can be generalized to others.

Designs for studying development Developmental researchers need to be sensitive of developmental differences in choosing a research design. Three key variables in developmental research design: Age Cohort Time of measurement

Age Age effects reflect differences caused by underlying processes, such as biological, psychological or sociocultural changes. Although usually represented by chronological age, age effects are inherent changes within the person and are not caused by the passage of time per se.

Cohort Cohort effects are differences caused by experiences and circumstances unique to the generation to which one belongs. In general, cohort effects corresponds to the normative history-graded influences. However, it is not easy to define a cohort as it can be specific such as in all people born in one particular year or general as in the baby-boom cohort.

Each generation is exposed to different sets of historical and personal events e.g. World War II, home computers, or opportunities to attend college. Cohort effects can have significant implications on research.

Time of measurement Time-of-measurement effects reflect differences stemming from sociocultural, environmental, historical or other events at the time data are obtained from the participants. The point in time in which a researcher decides to do research could lead him or her to different conclusions about the phenomenon being studied. Example: Data about wage increase may be influenced by the economic conditions of that year (economic recession vs. boom)

The three building-block variables (age, cohort, and time of measurement) can be represented in a single chart. Time of Measurement Cohort 2000 2010 2020 2030 1950 50 60 70 80 1960 40 1970 30 1980 20

Cohort is represented by the years in the first column. Time of measurement is represented by the years across the top. Age is represented by the numbers in individual cell. Computed by subtracting the cohort year from the time of measurement. Confounding is any situation in which one cannot determine which of two or more effects is responsible for the behaviors being observed.

Three types of research design Cross-Sectional Design Longitudinal Design Sequential Design

Cross sectional design subjects are tested only once subjects are from different ages & groups would tell us about age differences but not change over time Example: 100 people (1/4 are 20, 1/4 are 30, 1/4 are 40, 1/4 are 50) are given a one time survey about education.

Cross-Sectional Diagram ________________________________ Time of Testing 1970 1980 1990 2000 1920 _ 70 1930 60 1940 50 1950 C O H R T

Cross-Sectional Design ______________________________ Advantages Popular because they are relatively in-expensive, easier to manage & less time time consuming. Avoid the problems of subject attrition (subjects dropping out of the study) and practice effects (subjects being repeatedly tested) that plague longitudinal studies

Cross-Sectional Design ______________________________ Disadvantages Drawbacks include the confounding of age and cohort differences—i.e. differences among the groups maybe due to their historical/ environmental events and not because of development process. The results are thus contaminated by generational differences.

Longitudinal design Follow the same subjects over time Allowing change or consistency to be evaluated within the same group Issues specific to Longitudinal Design: Selective Attrition & Drop-out Time of Measurement Effect

Longitudinal Diagram ________________________________ Time of Testing C O H R T 1970 1980 1990 2000 1920 50 60 70 _ 1930 1940 1950

Longitudinal Design ______________________________ Advantages Provide a good picture of individual changes over time and developmental differences among individuals One can look for the long-term effect of earlier events, make predictions and observe outcomes and do retrospective analyses of developmental events to look for patterns

Longitudinal Design ______________________________ Disadvantages Time consuming & expensive Subject attrition is a significant problem because if too many subjects drop out (due to disinterest, moving away, death and so on) the sample become less and less representative Failure to respond a survey is correlated with severe disability, institutionalization & death Lead to bias in findings

Sequential design A combination of Cross-sectional & Longitudinal Five types of Sequential Design: Time-lag Time-sequential –treat age & time as IV Cohort-sequential –treat age & cohort as IV Cross-sequential –treat cohort and time as IV Panel studies

Time-Lag Diagram ________________________________ Time of Testing 1970 1980 1990 2000 2010 1920 50 _ 1930 1940 1950 1960 C O H R T

Time-Sequential Diagram Time of Testing 1970 1980 1990 2000 2010 1920 _ 70 1930 60 1940 50 1950 1960 C O H R T

Cohort-Sequential Diagram Time of Testing 1970 1980 1990 2000 2010 1920 50 60 70 _ 1930 1940 1950 1960

Cross-Sequential Diagram Time of Testing 1970 1980 1990 2000 2010 1920 _ 60 70 80 1930 50 1940 40 1950 1960 C O H R T

Panel Diagram Time of Testing 1970 1980 1990 2000 2010 1920 _ 60* 1930 50* 70* 1940 40* 80* 1950 1960 * Same individuals over time C O H R T

Sequential Design ____________________________ Advantages combine some strengths of both the cross sectional and longitudinal approaches, while at the same time attempting to minimize the confounding of age, cohort and time of measurement influences provide greater internal validity than either the traditional single-cohort longitudinal or the single-time-measurement cross-sectional designs Represent an important contribution of adult dev. To research in developmental psychological

Sequential Design ____________________________ Disadvantages Its too expensive and need high commitment The complexity has probably hindered their widespread use to date

Time-Lag Design ____________________________ Advantages Provides a picture of the effects of sociohistorical change at a particular point in development we see how the same age group behaves in different historical periods and contexts

Time-Lag Design ____________________________ Disadvantages cohort and time-of-measurement influences are confounded expensive and time consuming Only one age is studied