International Society for the Study of Behavioral Development

The International Society for the Study of Behavioral Development (ISSBD) was founded in 1969 on the occasion of international scientific meetings in Germany, England, and the United States by a group of researchers particularly devoted to longitudinal research on human development in a life span perspective. The interdisciplinary orientation was expressed by the emphasis on behavioral development. Due to the enormous expansion of scientific interest in psychological studies and particularly in research on human development in the 1970s, the newly formed society grew rapidly.

The mission of ISSBD entails the promotion, discovery, dissemination, and application of knowledge on human development across the entire life span. At the time of its foundation, the stress on commonalities and differences of developmental processes from [Page 606]infancy to old age was new, and it is still true that conceptualizing development in such a way represents particular challenges in the analyses of processes that result in continuities and discontinuities.

ISSBD was given its charter in the Netherlands, but its membership has always been truly international by design and in reality. At present the membership amounts to approximately 1,000 members in various categories (including student memberships) from 50-plus countries around the globe (with large representation from Europe and North America). A major emphasis was always to include researchers from less well-off countries where currency restrictions were in force. Toward this aim, an elaborate system of reduced membership dues and regional offices was established until the sociopolitical changes of the 1990s. Most members received their training and are active in various fields of psychology, but a considerable portion work in allied disciplines such as psychiatry, pediatrics, and sociology.

ISSBD's governance is composed of officers, namely the president (who also serves a term as past president), the secretary general, treasurer and membership secretary, the president-elect, the executive committee, and special advisors. Concerning nominations and elections for the officers and members of the executive committee, attention is give to representation of regions, disciplines, scientific topics, and gender. The current president is Rainer K. Silbereisen (2003–2006, University of Jena, Germany), the president-elect is Anne C. Petersen (W. K. Kellogg Foundation, United States).

The society's premier scientific gathering is the series of biennial meetings that started in 1971. The recent meetings have been held in Beijing (China, 2000), Ottawa (Canada, 2002), and Ghent (Belgium, 2004). The venue of the 2006 congress will be Melbourne (Australia). To date (2003), 16 meetings have been held in more than a dozen different countries, including North and South America, Europe, and Asia. The usual attendance during the past decade is in the order of 1,000 or more, typically from more than 50 countries. In line with the change in scientific publication strategies, proceedings have not published since the 1980s.

In order to fulfill its mission, ISSBD has always been active in organizing workshops and conferences. Between 1975 (Jakarta, Indonesia) and 1997 (Groningen, the Netherlands), nine Asian Workshops on Child and Adolescent Development were organized in the region, with a strong emphasis on scientific training. Likewise, a series of European Conferences of Developmental Psychology was organized under the auspices of ISSBD between 1984 (Groningen, the Netherlands) and 1994 (Krakow, Poland). Encouraged by the success of these events, an independent offshoot of ISSBD was formed, the European Society for Developmental Psychology, which organized these conferences from 1997 on (the incoming president of the new society is Willem Koops, the Netherlands, a former secretary general of ISSBD).

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