3.7: It doesn’t seem like you are solving the problem of developmental measurement equivalence. Are we missing something?

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Ellen A. Skinner, Thomas A. Kindermann, Robert W. Roeser, Cathleen L Smith, Andrew Mashburn & Joel Steele
Portland State University via Portland State University Library

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You are right. We don't want to “solve” it. We want to convert the problem into theoretical and empirical growth—the creation of “developmentally-friendly” conceptualizations that make it possible to use qualitatively different measures of constructs (be they actions, appraisals, or proximal processes), and render this information useful for creating differential pathways or trajectories by contextualizing them as parts of larger wholes and functions.

Table 3.5.1: Goals, Problems, and Strategies for Dealing with Developmental Measurement Equivalence.
Goal	Recruit and create representative samples of people of different ages who are the same on everything but age.
Problem	People of different ages are differentially easy to recruit.
	People of different ages are inherently different on many things besides age.
Stratagies	Cross-sectional
	Recruitment. Recruit hard-to-get participants to create representative age-graded samples.
	Statistical control. Measure attributes on which age-graded samples are selected and statistically control for them in examining age differences.
	Matching. Create matching samples of older participants and younger versions of themselves.
	Longitudinal
	Recruitment. Recruit hard-to-get participants to creating representative longitudinal samples. Retention. Retain the heck out of longitudinal samples to maintain representativeness.
	Replacement. Replace longitudinal drop-outs with similar participants.
	Differential development. Examine how patterns of developmental change differ for participants from different niches (combinations of gender, race, class, education, ethnicity, and immigration status).
	Assortativeness. Examine attributes that explain how people select and are selected into their specific contexts and length of stay in these contexts.
	Survivors. Examine the attributes that separate “survivors” from the nonsurvivors and consider their effects of differential development. If any of the non-survivors (e.g., workers who quit their jobs or were fired) are still alive, find them and study them.