American Psychological Association, Division 7 (Developmental Psychology)

Founded in 1946, Division 7 comprises developmental psychologists and members of the American Psychological Association (APA) from several disciplines who study or work in the area of human development. The division pursues several objectives involving the promotion of research in the field of developmental psychology and fostering the development of researchers by providing information about educational opportunities. The division also recognizes outstanding contributions to the discipline and facilitates the exchange of scientific information about developmental psychology through publications, such as the division's newsletter, and through national and international meetings. Finally, Division 7 promotes high standards for the application of scientific knowledge in human development to public policy issues. This entry will focus on the division's activities in applied developmental psychology (see Dalton, 1997, for a comprehensive history of the division).

The founding president of the division was John E. Anderson, who had previously served as president of the APA and the Society for Research in Child Development (SRCD) in 1943. While at the University of Minnesota, Anderson gathered together a core group of psychologists among Division 7's then 330 members; they were innovators and reformers who conducted research in a network of university institutes created by Lawrence K. Frank and supported by the Laura Spelman Rockefeller Foundation (Frank, 1962). Anderson and his colleagues had diverse interests in the fields of clinical and educational [Page 77]psychology, mental testing, developmental biology, and experimental psychology. The cofounders included Helen Thompson Woolley and Arthur Jersild, at Columbia University and Teachers College, who studied clinical aspects of personality development pertinent to educators. Also involved at the beginning were Iowa Child Welfare Research Station researchers Beth Wellman and Harold M. Skeels, who challenged the conventional wisdom that IQ predicted subsequent achievement, and Iowan Boyd McCandless, a pioneer in diagnostic tools for the assessment of learning disorders (see Cravens, 1993; Dalton, 1995). Developmental biologist Leonard Carmichael, who was APA president in 1940, was a cofounding member, as were clinicians Charlotte Bühler and Grace Fernald and experimentalists Harold Jones, Jean McFarlane, Louise Ames, and Wayne Dennis, among others.

When the decade of the 1950s began, the division leadership undertook new initiatives contributing to the professionalization of child development. During his presidency of the division in 1950, Robert Sears, a respected researcher in socialization processes, spearheaded efforts to train and certify psychologists working with children. In addition, Ruth Updegraff and Harold E. Anderson helped formulate a code of ethics for experimental research involving children, which was recommended for adoption by the APA (Updegraff & Stendler, 1951, pp. 4–5).

Practices and standards governing the regulation of research involving human subjects attracted renewed attention during Nora Newcombe's presidency in 2002; she challenged several proposed changes in institutional review board procedures that would severely hamper behavioral research involving children. Newcombe and her colleagues were particularly concerned that consistent procedures be adopted for informed consent, that low-risk procedures be clearly defined, that accountability be delineated in multisite research, and that the responsibilities of researchers who change institutions be specified (Barenbaum, Cauffman, & Newcombe, 2003).

During her presidential term of 1953 to 1954, Nancy Bayley enlarged the division's policy role. She formed a policy and planning committee, composed of Alfred Baldwin, Urie Bronfenbrenner, Irvin Child, Dale Harris, Irving Stone, and Boyd McCandless, to draft a statement of the general objectives for the division. They recommended that the committee advise the executive committee as to issues affecting child psychology as a science and profession and to “disseminate to the public facts and theories regarding the psychological development of the individual in his or her social setting” (Bayley, 1954, p. 5). The policy and planning committee proposed that an interdisciplinary focus be adopted for annual meetings that would “implement a cycle of symposia,” exploring problems in developmental psychology affecting other fields in psychology (Bayley, 1954, p. 6). The committee also recommended that panel discussions alternate between the assessment of methodological issues and presentation of research with broad theoretical implications.

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