How We Study Development
Everyone has some intuitive beliefs about development, often based on their own personal life experiences, but social scientist subject their ideas to scientific testing to determine whether or not their ideas are valid. From this we realize that there isn't one best way to study development. Rather its best if we look for the most appropriate methods to investigate the particular topics we want to examine. While human development may not always seem like it, its very much so a scientific field of study and must be treated in such a way. We look at this scientific methods in both basic and applied research of development.When theorist and professions in the field do studies they use the scientific method and make a prediction which is better known as a hypothesis. The work they have done can fall into one of two categories, those being basic research or applied research. These two categories can overlap with one another but in general it appears that basic research broadens what we know about development when applied research helps us improve and or fix something specific. Of course research can come from many different forms other than your typical, standard labor setting. A few main ways in which the gathering of information is taken includes but is not limited too to surveys, questionnaires, interviews those clinical and those not, and standardized tests. Some other ways for research include records, case studies, experiments, ability tests, personality test, projective tests and neuropsychological tests. Without a doubt research can always get sticky with bias's and unrepresentative samples. Overall, we typically break down human development into small sub categories including physical, cognitive, social and emotional development and along with these sub categories arise questions such as does nature or nurture have a greater impact, is development quantitative or qualitative, is development continuous or does it always fall into stages, and lastly is development stable or is it constantly changing and growing? Yet every approach has its own advantages and disadvantages, but there is no one approach that is better than the other.