How the Perceptions of People Regarding the Overall Development Process - Essay Example

The author focuses more on the subjective conception of development which is extensively explored from the psychological point of view. Thus three are three broader hypotheses also under which authors attempt to provide a comprehensive view of how individuals perceive adult development based on their sociological tradition dealing, the desirability of the expected change and how it contributes towards development, and finally the knowledge that adults hold of the overall development process.

The sampling methods adopted were selective sampling methods as according to the author, the bias toward sampling was necessary. This was necessarily done to sample only those respondents who possess the rich vocabulary to describe their beliefs in a more eloquent manner. This method, therefore, allowed the researcher to tap the young and educated respondents however, the overall differences in ratings on vocabulary are reported to be minimal within the respondents belonging to different age groups.

The overall procedures adapted to gather the data involved a mix of the techniques adapted by the researcher. This included oral as well as other means of collecting data under the supervised guidance of the author.

Respondents were asked certain questions for rating purposes and the overall results were then analyzed by the authors to arrive at a final conclusion. It is also significant to understand that respondents were asked about the different sets of questions within a certain time period i.e. there was two weeks gap between the first and the second session for data gathering by the author. On both occasions, the procedure was the same i.e. respondents were asked to rate certain adjectives to understand their perception of the developmental psychology and underlying hypothesis.

The results indicate that there was consensus among the various age group representatives regarding the overall process of adult development. Most of the respondents believed that development is a multi-directional process wherein the losses, as well as gains, exist together. What is also important to note is that the adults relatively held a better view of the development process and their perceptions were more elaborative as compared to the young adults who held relatively immature views of the development.

The overall strength of this article is its ability to very clearly provide a vivid picture of how the perceptions of people of different age groups differ from each other regarding the overall development process. What is, however, also important to note is that this article face to provide a universal explanation of the development process and how perceptions are held across the globe. A cross-sectional study would have been better to discuss issues like development psychology.