By Lars R. Bergman, David Magnusson, Bassam M. El Khouri
233 pages
This book describes an alternative, person-oriented approach in which the focus is on the individual as a functioning whole. The authors take as their theoretical starting points the holistic-interactionistic research paradigm expounded by David Magnusson and others, and the new developmental science in which connections and interactions between different systems (biological, psychological, social, etc.) are stressed. They present a quantitative methodology for preserving -- to the maximum extent possible -- the individual as a functioning whole that is largely based on work carried out in the Stockholm Laboratory for Developmental Science over the past 20 years.
The book constitutes a complete introductory guide to the person-oriented approach. The authors lay out the underlying theory, a number of basic methods, the necessary computer programs, and an extensive empirical example. (The computer programs have been collected into a statistical package, Sleipner, that is freely accessible on the Internet. The empirical example deals with boys' school adjustment from a pattern perspective and covers both positive and negative adaptation.)