Abstract:
Averages dominate psychological science: There are representative groups, mean trajectories, and generalizations to typical samples. However, few people, parents, or clinicians would proclaim that they themselves, or that their children or patients, are average. In developmental science, for instance, individual youth are the focus of many eminent theories, yet there is a shocking paucity of research methods—including study designs and analysis techniques—that truly afford individual-level inferences. The goal of this presentation is to instigate a discussion about the advantages of an idiographic approach to psychological science, focusing on how research questions, study designs, and data analyses can be formed, implemented, and conducted in ways that optimize inferences about individuals instead of averages—and what challenges such an approach poses.