The Permanence of Change and the Impermanence of Stability

Publisher Website
Google Scholar
Abstract
In view of expectable changes due to developmental transformation, cultural context, and secular effects, expectations of high developmental consistency are unwarranted. Sources of inconsistency as well as sources of consistency are in principle lawful. By developmental consistency I refer to continuity in a construct and to stability in one’s relative placement on that construct, over time. Assessment of the real continuity in a construct must precede assessment of stability, and must be distinguished from pseudocontinuity, or the simultaneous presence of first-order continuity, in which similar items cluster together across time, and second-order discontinuity, in which the cluster loads differently across time on orthogonal principal components. The presence of continuity/discontinuity in parent-child relations, as well as in parent and child behaviors and types is considered. Using examples from the Family Socialization and Developmental Competence longitudinal project, measure selection and sources of developmental discontinuity are discussed in view of the expectation of change.

This publication has 2 references indexed in Scilit: