Creating a Developmental Scale to Account for Heterotypic Continuity in Development: A Simulation Study

Abstract

Many psychological constructs show heterotypic continuity—their behavioral manifestations change with development but their meaning remains the same. However, research has paid little attention to how to account for heterotypic continuity. A promising approach to account for heterotypic continuity is creating a developmental scale using vertical scaling. A simulation was conducted to compare creating a developmental scale using vertical scaling to traditional approaches of longitudinal assessment. Traditional approaches that failed to account for heterotypic continuity resulted in less accurate growth estimates, at the person‐ and group level. Findings suggest that ignoring heterotypic continuity may result in faulty developmental inferences. Creating a developmental scale with vertical scaling is recommended to link different measures across time and account for heterotypic continuity.

Heterotypic continuity of inhibitory control in early childhood: Evidence from four widely used measures.

“…Future research will either need to (a) modify the task to assess the same construct over the target age span (e.g., Carlson et al, 2016) or (b) employ and assemble different measures at different ages to retain construct validity invariance (e.g., Petersen et al, 2016). Ignoring heterotypic continuity has been shown to result in (a) measures that are less able to detect growth and (b) incorrect developmental inferences, compared with approaches that account for heterotypic continuity (Chen & Jaffee, 2015; Petersen, LeBeau, et al, 2021; Petersen et al, 2018). For instance, in a study of internalizing problems (such as anxiety and depression) from adolescence to adulthood, no group-level change was observed when using the same measures across ages, whereas internalizing problems showed a group-level decrease when using different, construct-valid measures across ages (Petersen et al, 2018).…”

“…For instance, in a study of internalizing problems (such as anxiety and depression) from adolescence to adulthood, no group-level change was observed when using the same measures across ages, whereas internalizing problems showed a group-level decrease when using different, construct-valid measures across ages (Petersen et al, 2018). Additionally, in a simulation study of externalizing problems from early childhood to adolescence where the true slope was specified to be negative, use of the same measures across development incorrectly yielded positive slopes at the group-level (Petersen, LeBeau, et al, 2021). Prior studies have demonstrated ways to account for heterotypic continuity in development by using changing, age-appropriate measures to ensure construct validity invariance and statistical approaches to ensure statistical equivalence (McArdle et al, 2009; Petersen, Bates, Dodge, et al, 2015; Petersen et al, 2016; Petersen & LeBeau, in press; Petersen et al, 2018).…”

Creating a developmental scale to chart the development of psychopathology with different informants and measures across time.

“…Heterotypic continuity poses challenges for measurement because it necessitates using different measures across ages to maintain developmental relevance. If the RDoC construct changes in its manifestation over time and the measures do not accommodate these changes, the measures lack validity for the same construct across time, which may lead to faulty developmental inferences (Chen & Jaffee, 2015; Petersen et al, in press; Petersen et al, 2018). Moreover, using only the items that are in common across all ages would lack content validity because doing so would discard items that are important for assessing age-specific manifestations of the construct, which are often important for assessing clinical levels of the construct.…”

“…In the present study, we use an item response theory (IRT) approach to vertical scaling. The IRT approach to vertical scaling yields more accurate developmental inferences than traditional measurement approaches that ignore heterotypic continuity (Petersen et al, in press) and thus holds great potential to model development of RDoC constructs. IRT estimates two parameters for each item: discrimination and severity (difficulty).…”

Studying children's growth in self‐regulation using changing measures to account for heterotypic continuity: A Bayesian approach to developmental scaling

“…Studies examining children's self‐regulation development should account for these changes by using different measures across ages (Petersen et al., 2016, 2020). Using different, age‐relevant measures over time provides more accurate growth estimates, at the group‐ and person‐level than approaches that ignore heterotypic continuity (Chen & Jaffee, 2015; Petersen et al., 2018; Petersen, LeBeau, et al., 2021). Although considerable research has examined different measures of self‐regulation at different ages in recognition of its heterotypic continuity (e.g., Chang et al., 2015), no prior work has examined individuals’ self‐regulation growth using different measures across development.…”