Question

Select one classic developmental research design, such as the cross sectional design, or the longitudinal design, or the sequential design, and describe five components of a fictitious research project in which the fictitious person, who is in the age range of emerging adulthood to late adulthood, is participating.

Samples of Good Work

: Betty, age 70, participated in a cross sectional research study at the university near her home. The researchers were interested in discovering if there were differences in the early symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease, depending on a person’s age. There were 1000 participants in the study, with 200 65 year olds, 200 70 year olds, 200 75 year olds, 200 80 year olds, and 200 85 year olds. Betty drove to the campus and went to the lab, where she was interviewed and filled out questionnaires and took memory tests for 3 hours. One of the researchers told her that Betty could have a copy of the results of the study, if she wanted, which would be available in one month, being that the study design was a quick way to gather data, the results would be available relatively soon. The research told Betty that the results would not show changes over time, since Betty was only see once. Betty was pleased to have participated in a study that was relatively inexpensive to conduct and to have contributed to the further advancement of knowledge about the disease.

1. When Lori was 75, she saw an advertisement to participate in a longitudinal study, when she was near the elevator of the hospital where she went for her physical examination. 2. As a longitudinal study, the study was designed to take place for 10 years, and Lori thought she would be able to participate and complete the study. 3. The longitudinal study focused on how each individual in the study aged over the course of the 10 year period of time, and Lori thought it would be interesting to participate. 4. As part of the longitudinal design, she was evaluated once a year for 10 years by filling out a questionnaire that had questions about her physical health and her social functioning. 5. When Lori was 85, the study was completed, and she was given results showing how her physical development and her social development had changed in some areas and remained stable in other areas.

Answer 1

Maturation and growth don't stop at 15. We continue to grow and develop throughout our lives and into old age. There are a handful of ways to conduct research on adults and older persons, which will provide you with exceptional information about the process of aging and maturation.

When you want to see how people change over a lifetime, like comparing people who are 20, 40, 60, and 80 years old, you really only have two good options. Longitudinal design is a research study where a sample of the population is studied at intervals to examine the effects of development. To conduct a longitudinal design, we start with 20-year-olds and then check in with them every 20 years to see how they've changed. We'll get more into the advantages and the disadvantages in a little bit.

This seems like a lot of work, although it would give really good information. Another option is cross-sectional design, defined as sampled groups along a developmental path in an experiment to determine how development influences a research variable. Instead of taking one group of people and following them for 60 years, we take 4 groups of people and study them now. Our first group is all 20-year-olds, the second group is 40-year-olds, and so on. This saves us time because we can do all the research now instead of over 60 years.

And because almost every science has someone who cleverly combines things, we have a sequential design, also sometimes referred to as a cross-sequential design, which is defined as a combination of longitudinal and cross-sectional designs, by following several differently aged cohorts over time. With longitudinal, we look at one group over a long time. With cross-sectional, we look at a whole bunch of groups right now. With sequential, we look at a whole bunch of groups over time.

Most importantly of all, we need to have ecological validity, which is defined as the level to which we can apply findings to real-world situations. Meaning, if I say people will always do better on their tests and pay attention to their lessons, but I have to wrap a live electrode around their thumb to keep their attention, then this would be said to have low ecological validity. On the other hand, if I say that more people will watch this lesson if it was read in a British accent, then that would be said to have high ecological validity.

Advantages

There are some distinct advantages to each type of research, some of which we have already discussed.

With longitudinal designs, we have one main advantage; that is, individual differences are recorded, which means that we can go back later and see if something peculiar is happening in the data. For example, if after our 10-year-long study on aging we found that people with darker skin appeared to age better, then we can go back and examine the exact amounts of melanin in their skin.