Evidence-based health interventions are frequently translated into real-world settings where practical needs drive changes to intervention protocols. Due to logistical and resource constraints, these naturally arising adaptations are rarely assessed for comparative effectiveness using a randomized trial. Nevertheless, when observational data are…

Research in human development often relies on composites, that is, composed variables such as indices. Their composite nature renders these variables inaccessible to conventional factor-centric psychometric validation techniques such as confirmatory factor analysis (CFA). In the context of human development research, there is currently no…

Mediation has played a critical role in developmental theory and research. Yet, developmentalists rarely discuss the methodological challenges of establishing causality in mediation analysis or potential strategies to improve the identification of causal mediation effects. In this article, we discuss the potential outcomes framework from…

Mathematics teacher educators play a key role in supporting secondary mathematics teachers' development of effective, research-based formative assessment (FA) practices. We used qualitative research synthesis as a tool to identify actionable recommendations for mathematics teacher educators as they work with teachers on FA practices in secondary…

How researchers use statistical analyses shapes their research toward or away from an anti-racist agenda. In this article, we demonstrate how developmental scientists can use the QuantCrit framework to critically examine the process of conducting quantitative analyses. In particular, we focus on mixture modeling to clearly demonstrate how the…

The concept of spirituality is influenced by culture and the values and mores of Brazil, and though not directly linked to religion it actually grows from the same roots. This paper examines spirituality in education from the perspective of a humanistic psychology framework expressed as an ideal of the adequate personality or healthy personality.…

Statistical investigations, a thread within the statistics strand of the mathematics and statistics learning area (Ministry of Education, 2007), are underpinned by the statistical enquiry cycle. As teachers introduce their students to the statistical enquiry cycle, they are supporting their students to become data detectives, posing and answering…

Outdoor adventure education (OAE) has a long history of being credited with the personal and social development (PSD) of its participants. PSD is notoriously difficult to measure quantitatively, yet stakeholders demand statistical evidence that given approaches to eliciting PSD are effective in their methods. Rightly or wrongly, many stakeholders…

Various studies show that higher education institutions contribute to regional economic development by R&D, creation of human capital, knowledge and technology transfer, and by creation of a favourable milieu. It is brought out that the basic procedure is to sum expenditures of the college community (students, faculty, staff and visitors)…

The concepts and paradigms "development", "evolution", and "developmental behavior genetics" target, in their statements, populations. The laws of genetics and evolution are supposed to apply to every single case in a population. It can be counted among the major contributions of Gottlieb (1992, 1995) to have pointed…

When truly spectacular events occur in the performing arts or in team sports, when the sets of artists or athletes respectively creating these events are discussed, a common phrase used in America to explain the "good fortune" that was involved in such unique occurrences is that "the stars aligned." In this commentary on:…

Assessing societal impacts of research is more difficult than assessing advances in knowledge. Methods to evaluate research impact on policy processes and outcomes are especially underdeveloped, and are needed to optimize the influence of research on policy for addressing complex issues such as chronic diseases. Contribution analysis (CA), a…

The main theme of this paper concerns the persistent critique of Gilbert Gottlieb on developmental behavior genetics and my reactions to this critique, the latter changing from rejection to complete acceptation. Concise characterizations of developmental behavior genetics, developmental systems theory (to which Gottlieb made essential…

Initiatives, like the UK ESRC's RDI/CI programmes and the Q-Step Centres, have a long-term aim of addressing the well-documented decline in the pool of academics able and willing to teach quantitative methods (QM). However, these initiatives will take time to make an impact; therefore, the upskilling of current staff is a vital strategy if we want…

Rural students are at risk for vocabulary underdevelopment and often have less access to educational resources. The purpose of this investigation was to examine the effectiveness of an Internet-based Speech/Language Pathologist (SLP)-teacher consultation to support rural teachers' vocabulary instruction to improve their students' lexical…