Parents act together and with others relative to the transition to adulthood of their young adult children with IDD. These projects are complex and differ in goals, steps, resources and emotional regulation and motivation.

The purpose of this study was to describe the relational processes that exist between parents and athletes when engaged in an early specialization sport. Using an instrumental case study design, 5 parent-athlete (M athlete age ϭ 11.40 years) dyads in Canadian competitive figure skating represented cases for individual and collective analysis. Contextual action theory and the action-project method were used to identify and describe the naturally occurring projects (i.e., joint actions over time) of parents and athletes as they engaged in the transition together. Data were collected longitudinally over a total of 10 months and included video-recorded parent-athlete conversations, video feedback-supported recall of thoughts and feelings, and 6 months of biweekly self-report data collected through telephone interviews. Data analysis occurred simultaneously over the course of the study using transcripts, a coding system, and a form of member reflection. Final cross-case analyses highlighted pertinent themes across cases. Parent-athlete dyads' joint projects were grouped based on three common themes: negotiating school, sport, and extracurricular commitments; progressing toward skating goals; and maintaining a developmental focus, including tailoring involvement in skating to accommodate growth and development and prioritizing wellroundedness and personal development. The joint projects were embedded in the broader parent-child relationship project. This study presents a goal-directed and relational perspective on the transition to specialized training in Canadian competitive figure skating. Together, parents and athletes not only focused on negotiating the various commitments, demands on time, and expectations for progress in figure skating, they also accommodated and fostered nonsport development.

This article describes an alternative framework for conceptualizing and researching emerging adulthood based on the notions of goal-directed processes. Specifically, contextual action theory (CAT) is proposed to add value to understanding transition-toadulthood processes because of its emphasis on description, intentional action, and relational context. A related naturalistic, longitudinal method, the action-project method (A-PM), is used to study joint, goal-directed actions and projects (multiple actions over time). The A-PM qualitatively describes joint projects of emerging adults and those involved with them by relying on three perspectives of action: manifest behavior, internal processes, and social meaning. The method consists of video recording joint action between participants, accessing internal processes of action through a video playback interview, and monitoring joint projects over time. This conceptualization and method have been used to describe the joint goal-directed processes inherent in emerging adulthood including parent-youth relationships, friendship, identity formation, and school-work transitions.

Eight dyads ( N = 16) residing in Western Canada participated in this investigation of how young adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD) and their parents jointly construct, articulate, and act on goals pertinent to the young adults' transition to adulthood. Using the action-project method to collect and analyze conversations and video recall data, cases were grouped representing the ways goal-directed projects brought relationship ( n = 4), planning ( n = 3) or both ( n = 1) to the foreground as joint projects. Resources internal to the dyad such as emotional resources, and external to the dyad, facilitated formulation and pursuit of projects. Lack of external supports and limited parental knowledge about IDD hindered joint project formulation.

Systematic case study designs are emerging as alternative paradigm strategies for psychotherapy and social science research. Through enhanced sensitivity to context, these designs examine idiographic profiles of causal processes. We specifically advocate the use of the hermeneutic single-case efficacy design (HSCED). HSCED has recently been used to investigate the efficacy of an existing therapy with a new population (Observed and Experiential Integration for athlete performance barriers) and an emerging therapy (Lifespan Integration Therapy). We describe innovations in HSCED that were implemented for these studies. These developments include (a) integrating psychotherapists as case developers, (b) incorporating multiple cases in one investigation, and (c) tailoring the repertoire of assessment tools. These extensions strategically incorporated principles of contextual paradigms in HSCED, thus complementing single-case designs that neglect idiographic contexts. We discuss recommendations for using HSCED in practice-based research, highlighting its potential as a bridge to address the research-practice gap.