Development (General)

Introduction

Human behaviour takes place in both a temporal and social context. Psychological development refers to the temporal context, and deals with (dis)continuous progression, increasing complexity and non-entropy of behaviours, cognitions and emotions. Development dominates the first half of life, and is latent in the second half. It refers to behavioural changes [Page 302]that cannot be instantly turned back. Firstly, in this contribution, characteristics and purposes of assessment and of development are described. Secondly, the role of developmental constructs and test theory for assessment of behavioural development are both discussed. Thirdly, instruments for assessing behavioural development, specifically in children, are described. Finally, some thoughts are presented on the future of assessment of development.

General and Developmental Assessment: Purposes

Assessment in general is characterized as solving a client's problem by following specific decision rules, by measuring individual differences, by gathering and integrating information about a client's behaviour and environment in order to help, and by deciding for interventions using information about the client's behaviour and his or her social environment (Fernandez-Ballesteros et al., 2001). Assessment of development usually refers to children and is defined as assessing the levels of behavioural, cognitive, and socio-emotional functioning in order to show the strong and weak sides of a client (Johnson & Sheeber, 1999).

Both general and developmental assessments have three main objectives. The first is to diagnose the presence or absence of disorders. This refers to the activity of ascribing a person to a category by means of explicit rules; for example, those presented in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV, 1994). A child can be fitted into a ADHD or Conduct Disorder category (see ‘Classification’ entry). The second purpose is prediction (see ‘Prediction (General)’ entry). If one knows, for example, the level of intelligence, extroversion or conscientiousness of a child, one can predict the probability of school success or future behavioural adaptation. The third main objective is the explanation as expressed in the Hypotheses-Testing-Model (HTM) of assessment (see ‘Explanation’ entry). Explanation is pre-eminently relevant in developmental assessment, because it looks for the cause of problematic and deviant behaviours and helps to design effective interventions.

While development implies progression, change, increasing complexity, and seemingly even erratic change, it is easily presupposed (partly because of the frequent use of trait-like concepts and instruments) that the categories, the individual differences, and the effects of intervention are stable (Lewis, 1999). In addition, hypotheses testing in the HTM does not refer to testing a population parameter, but to comparing an assessment result with a pre-established criterion. An example is the hypothesis that this child is not able to profit from normal education, because its IQ is lower than 80. To conclude, developmental assessment is aimed at classifying, predicting, and explaining. This last goal is important because of the explaining and changing of children's problematic behaviours.

Assessment and Developmental Psychology: Method and Content

Assessment is not a separate and independent psychological discipline. It borrows from methods and theories of all psychological (sub)-disciplines. Developmental assessment uses developmental theories, models, and constructs but also test theory in order to design appropriate instruments. Moreover, it is based on the methodological rules that come from the empirical-analytical tradition. This disciplines the assessment process scientifically (ter Laak, 1997). The quality of developmental assessment depends on how well the structure of developmental constructs, test theory, instruments, and the rules followed during the assessment process ‘fits’. The first three, and how they fit, are discussed below.

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