This investigation examined the dimensions of developmental timing, subtype, and severity of maltreatment and their relations with child adaptation. The 814 children who participated in a summer day camp, 492 of whom were maltreated and 322 of whom were nonmaltreated comparison children, were assessed by camp counselors on their internalizing and externalizing symptomatology, aggressive, withdrawn, and cooperative behavior, and on personality dimensions of ego resiliency and ego control, and were rated by peers on disruptive, aggressive, and cooperative behavior. The severity within each subtype of maltreatment and the developmental period in which each subtype occurred were examined through hierarchical regression analyses. Additionally, children with similar timing or subtype patterns were grouped to explore diversity in outcomes. Results highlighted the role of severity of emotional maltreatment in the infancy–toddlerhood period and physical abuse during the preschool period in predicting externalizing behavior and aggression. Severity of physical neglect, particularly when it occurred during the preschool period, was associated with internalizing symptomatology and withdrawn behavior. Additionally, maltreatment during the school-age period contributed significant variance after earlier maltreatment was controlled. Chronic maltreatment, especially with onset during infancy–toddlerhood or preschool periods, was linked with more maladaptive outcomes. The implications of measuring multiple dimensions for improving research in child maltreatment are discussed.

This longitudinal study investigated the relationship between retirement transitions and subsequent psychological well-being using data on 458 married men and women (aged 50-72 years) who were either still in their primary career jobs, retired, or had just made the transition to retirement over the preceding 2 years. The findings show that the relationship between retirement and psychological well-being must be viewed in a temporal, life course context. Specifically, making the transition to retirement within the last 2 years is associated with higher levels of morale for men, whereas being "continuously" retired is related to greater depressive symptoms among men. The results suggest the importance of examining various resources and contexts surrounding retirement transitions (gender, prior level of psychological well-being, spouses' circumstance, and changes in personal control, marital quality, subjective health, and income adequacy) to understand the dynamics of the retirement transition and its relationship with psychological well-being.

This study investigated the relations among parenting, sibling relationship, peer group, and adolescent externalizing behaviors. With data obtained from a sample of 341 male and 313 female adolescents (M age = 14.4 years) and their parents and siblings from nonstepfamilies and stepfather families, cross-sectional analyses supported the hypothesis that the contributions of parental negativity, parental monitoring, and sibling negativity to adolescents' externalizing behaviors would operate directly and also indirectly through deviant peer associations. The findings of multigroup comparison analyses suggested that the relationships between family and peer correlates and adolescent externalizing behaviors vary as a function of family type and adolescent gender.

Meaningful and measurable aspects of short-term intraindividual variability have been established in what are conceptualized to be relatively stable interindividual differences dimensions. Illustrative are anxiety and other temperament traits as well as certain kinds of cognitive abilities. Reclamation of "signal" from the "noise" of intraindividual variability has rested heavily on research designs that involve frequently repeated observations. We extended this line of research to other trait-like domains by examining biweekly self-reports of world views and religious beliefs of a sample of elderly participants. The results indicated that not only is there occasion-to-occasion variability in the self-reports but the structure of these fluctuations is consistent over time and bears considerable resemblance to structures reported from cross-sectional data.

Intra-individual patterns of time-lagged relationships among self-reports of social support, self-concept, and physical and psychological wellbeing were investigated. Participants were older adults (mean age = 77 years) who were measured weekly on some scales and biweekly on others, covering a total of 25 weeks. Dynamic factor models were fitted to multivariate repeated measures data pooled over subsets of participants. The results indicate significant time-lagged, cross-factor relationships showing that negative social support has both a direct effect and an indirect effect, through less positive self-concept, on physical health measures. For the measures of negative social support, self-concept, subjective health, and physical performance (gait), there are substantial autoregressive effects indicating persisting factor scores over 1 or 2 weeks. How intra-individual perspectives and methods can facilitate the study of complex developmental processes is discussed.