The focus of this multidisciplinary journal is the synthesis of research and application to promote positive development across the life span and across the globe. The journal publishes research that generates descriptive and explanatory knowledge about dynamic and reciprocal person-environment interactions essential to informed public dialogue, social policy, and preventive and development optimizing interventions. This includes research relevant to the development of individuals and social systems across the life span -- including the wide range of familial, biological, societal, cultural, physical, ecological, political and historical settings of human development. The applied developmental science orientation is defined by three conjoint emphases. The applied aspect reflects its direct implication for what individuals, families, practitioners, and policymakers do. The developmental aspect emphasizes a focus on systematic and successive changes within individual and social systems that occur across the life span. This assumption stresses the importance of understanding normative and atypical processes as they emerge within different developmental periods and across diverse biological, physical, social, cultural and political settings. The science aspect underscores the need to utilize a range of research methods to collect reliable and objective information in a systematic manner to test the validity of theory and application. The convergence of these three aspects leads to a fostering of a reciprocal relationship between theory and application as a cornerstone of applied developmental science, one wherein empirically based, developmental theory not only guides intervention strategies and social policy, but is influenced by the outcome of these activities. Furthermore, the convergence calls for a multidisciplinary perspective aimed at integrating information and skills drawn from relevant biological, medical, social, and behavioral science disciplines. Given this multidisciplinary orientation, the journal publishes hypothesis-generating as well as hypothesis-testing research employing any of a diverse array of rigorous qualitative as well as quantitative methodologies - multivariate-longitudinal studies, demographic analyses, secondary analyses of large data sets, evaluation research, intensive measurement studies, ethnographic interpretations, laboratory experiments, analyses of policy and/or policy engagement studies, or animal comparative studies - when they have important implications for the application of developmental science across the human life span. Manuscripts pertinent to the diversity of development throughout the life span -- cross-national and cross-cultural studies, systematic studies of psychopathology, and studies pertinent to gender, ethnic, and racial diversity -- are particularly welcome. The journal does not typically publish pilot studies. Where appropriate, authors should be sure to include in their manuscript the power analysis or other analytic techniques that support the sample size and the nature of the sample selected for each study described in the article. Read Less

The focus of this multidisciplinary journal is the synthesis of research and application to promote positive development across the life span and across the globe. The journal publishes research that generates descriptive and explanatory knowledge about dynamic and reciprocal ...... Read More