Keep a few carefully kept longitudinal individual records from birth rather than relying on one-time group measurements¶

Strategy · All strategies
Evidence · 2 claims (2 for) · 1 study (1 associational), q1 · 0 of 1 report an effect size · 2 claims rest on one study

Description¶

The author recommends systematic measurements of individual children at regular intervals, beginning at birth and continuing to maturity, as the data needed to draw conclusions about correlations between mental and physical development and about rhythms of growth and retardation. He argues that "Even a few records of this sort, if carefully kept, will be of much more importance" for working out details of mental and physical development and their interrelations than one-time measurements of large numbers of individuals of known age only.

Design Implications¶

Context¶

Requirements¶

• Measurements taken at regular intervals over several years, beginning at birth and continuing until maturity

Constraints¶

Target Learners¶

• individual children from birth through maturity

Target Learning Goals¶

• identifying rhythms of growth and retardation and correlations between mental and physical development

Claims¶

• Cross-sectional measurements of children of the same age may yield spurious growth facts because of great individual differences [+W]
• Regular physical measurements of two brothers were taken from birth for six years four months and three years four months [+W]

Related Strategies¶

Examples¶

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Key Sources¶

• King, Irving. (1930). Measurements of the Physical Growth of Two Children. The Journal of Educational Psychology. https://psycnet.apa.org/journal/edu