Multiple facets of well-being are known to show steep end-of-life deteriorations. However, the underlying mechanisms and pathways are vague. Capitalizing on an earlier review of the existing empirical literature on terminal decline, we present a conceptual/methodological framework that can be used as a tool to structure future inquiry aimed at…

Lifespan research has long been interested in how contexts shape individual development. Using the separation and later reunification of Germany as a kind of natural experiment we examine whether and how living and dying in the former East or West German context has differentially shaped late-life development of well-being. We apply multi-level…

According to family systems and life course theories, periods of intense change, such as early adolescence, can disrupt stable family systems, leading to changes in family relationships. In this longitudinal study, we investigate 2 types of change in parental hostility and warmth toward their children during early adolescence (Grades 6 to…

One key objective of life span research is to examine how individual development is shaped by the historical time people live in. Secular trends favoring later-born cohorts on fluid cognitive abilities have been widely documented, but findings are mixed for well-being. It remains an open question whether secular increases in well-being seen in…

Individuals change over time, often in complex ways. Generally, studies of change over time have combined individuals into groups for analysis, which is inappropriate in most, if not all, studies of development. The authors explain how to identify appropriate levels of analysis (individual vs. group) and demonstrate how to estimate changes in…

Growth mixture modeling (GMM) is a method for identifying multiple unobserved sub-populations, describing longitudinal change within each unobserved sub-population, and examining differences in change among unobserved sub-populations. We provide a practical primer that may be useful for researchers beginning to incorporate GMM analysis into their…

Nonlinear growth curves or growth curves that follow a specified nonlinear function in time enable researchers to model complex developmental patterns with parameters that are easily interpretable. In this article we describe how a variety of sigmoid curves can be fit using the M"plus" structural modeling program and the nonlinear…

Growth curve modeling has become a mainstay in the study of development. In this article we review some of the flexibility provided by this technique for describing and testing hypotheses about: (1) intraindividual change across multiple occasions of measurement, and (2) interindividual differences in intraindividual change. Through empirical…