Qualitative methodology in developmental psychology

Qualitative methodology presently is gaining increasing recognition in developmental psychology. Although the founders of developmental psychology to a large extent already used qualitative procedures, the field was long dominated by a (post) positivistic quantitative paradigm. The increasing recognition of the sociocultural embeddedness of human development, and of the importance to study individuals’ subjective experience, however, calls for adequate methodological procedures that allow for the study of processes of transformation across the life span. The wide range of established procedures in qualitative research offers a promising avenue to advance the field in this direction.