14 - The Promise of Comparative, Longitudinal Research for Studies of Productive-Reproductive Processes in Children's Lives

Summary

In introducing this volume the editors argue for the need to focus directly on the processes or mechanisms of development and to document how and why these processes may vary across cultural, ethnic, racial, and socioeconomic groups. I feel these are laudable goals and would argue that we need new methodological practices to reach them. I have discussed elsewhere (Corsaro, 1993) the promise of comparative, longitudinal ethnography for studying productive–reproductive processes in children's lives. While I have relied on and see great potential in the use of ethnographic methods for studying socialization (or “interpretive reproduction,” Corsaro, 1992), I believe a range of methods are appropriate for the study of developmental processes. However, whatever methods are employed are best placed in a general research program or agenda that is longitudinal and ethnohistorical, multilevel, and cross–cultural.

Longitudinal research, whether quantitative or qualitative, is important because it allows for a direct focus on the nature and results of changes in children's lives as they move through key developmental and transition periods. All three of the chapters I have been asked to comment on have at least some longitudinal features in their research designs.

The chapter by Beth Kurtz–Costes, Rona McCall, and Wolfgang Schneider on acculturation (Chapter 6) offers the most traditional and extensive longitudinal design of the three. As the authors note, it is surprising that there have been so few longitudinal studies of acculturation.