Life-Span Developmental Psychology: Methodological Issues is based on a conference, held at West Virginia University in 1971, that focused on the general topic of Life-Span Developmental Psychology. The conference provided a forum for the discussion of a variety of methodological issues related to the study of developmental processes over the life-span. The principal objectives of the Life-Span Conference have been not only to explicate, by successive approximation, the range of empirical phenomena with which a life-span developmental psychology should be concerned, but also to explore issues about theory, measurement, design, and data analysis which bear upon it. The book opens with a chapter on ethical issues in developmental psychology. This is followed by separate chapters on topics such as cross-cultural research in developmental psychology; the implications of the two models that have had the greatest impact on developmental psychology—the mechanistic (reactive organism) model and the organismic (active organism) model; and research strategies and measurement methods for investigating human development
