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…

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…

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:…

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…

This five-wave study aims to investigate the development of adolescents' perceptions of support, negative interaction, and power in best friendships from ages 12 to 20 years. Furthermore, gender differences and linkages between the three dimensions are explored. A total of 593 early adolescents (53.6% boys) and 337 middle adolescents (43.3% boys)…

Dell, Burger, and Svec (1997) proposed that the proportion of speech errors classified as anticipations (e.g., "moot and mouth") can be predicted solely from the overall error rate, such that the greater the error rate, the lower the anticipatory proportion (AP) of errors. We report a study examining whether this effect applies to changes in error…

Michigan State University (MSU) is strongly committed to the idea that study abroad is deeply beneficial and important for undergraduate students. However there is a relative scarcity of systematically gathered qualitative and quantitative information that assesses the impact of study abroad. In the summer of 2000, MSU implemented a broad plan to…