Chapter 23: Developmental Psychology

Erica Burman

Developmental psychology Qualitative research in developmental psychology is no different in principle from other areas of psychology, although its specific focus highlights in stark form key issues for all psychological research. In particular its preoccupations with conceptualizing, measuring and evaluating change and with working with a vulnerable, low status population – with arguably limited, and certainly hard-to-interpret, repertoires of responses – have generated complex methodological and ethical debates (with the precise relationships between the attributions of limited capacity and difficulty of interpretation constituting much of both the conceptual and methodological literature). My aim here is to review more standard methodological treatments in developmental psychology and, beyond this, to indicate some more ‘outlying’ but innovative approaches that offer glimpses of the kinds of research that might usefully extend the current remit and approaches of developmental psychology. This involves taking a broad understanding of cross-disciplinary treatments of both method and childhood. Developmental ...

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