Twenty-five years of developmental 1
Running head: TWENTY-FIVE YEARS OF DEVELOPMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY
Twenty-five Years of Developmental and Child Psychology in Ireland:
An analysis of PsycLit and ERIC data bases
Eilis Hennessy
University College Dublin, National University of Ireland Dublin
Diane Hogan
The Children’s Research Centre, Trinity College, Dublin
Hennessy, E., & Hogan, D. M. (2000). Twenty-five years of developmental and child
psychology in Ireland: An analysis of PsycLit and ERIC data bases, Irish Journal of
Psychology, Special Issue on Child Developmental Psychology in Ireland, 21, 105-121.
Address for correspondence:
Eilis Hennessy
Department of Psychology
University College Dublin
Belfield
Dublin 4
Eilis.Hennessy@ucd.ie
Twenty-five years of developmental 2
Abstract
The paper presents an overview of publications during the past twenty-five years in the
area of child psychology and child and adult development by researchers based in Irish
institutions or using an Irish sample. Papers were identified through searches of the
PsycLit and ERIC electronic data bases. In the period since 1974 there were over 300
publications with the majority appearing in the last ten years. The paper identifies the
changing trends over time in publications in the areas of social functioning, cognition,
clinical issues, education, measurement and public policy. The leading area of research is
children’s social functioning and there is evidence of a growing interest in applied social
issues. Almost all empirical research involved samples of school age children with very
limited attention to infancy, adulthood and aging. While most authors clearly intended
their focus on children to reflect an interest in developmental processes very few of the
studies used traditional developmental designs or nationally representative samples. The
authors conclude that investment is needed in a nationally representative longitudinal
study that will contribute to our understanding of development in the context of rapid
social change in Ireland.
Twenty-five years of developmental 3
Introduction
This article provides an overview of publications on children’s psychological
development written by authors in Irish Institutions or written about the development of
Irish children and adolescents over the past twenty-five years. Although we use the term
‘developmental psychology’ in the title of the article many of the articles were not written
by psychologists, or were written by psychologists in collaboration with colleagues in
medicine, sociology, education and social work. The article does not, however, include
research on the physical development of children or on research with a purely medical
focus.
In this special issue of the Irish Journal of Psychology, which focuses on current research
in developmental child psychology, this review aims to provide a context for
understanding how this small selection of articles relates to the larger body of
developmental research undertaken over the last twenty five years. A review of
publications in the area is also timely because the late 1990s have seen significant
changes in government policy relating to children in Ireland. Although children’s lives
are influenced indirectly by a variety of changes in policy and legislation (for example
social welfare payments, environment policy, and divorce legislation, to name but a few)
the last decade is notable for the number of pieces of legislation which have children as
their specific focus. In Northern Ireland the Children (Northern Ireland) Order 1995 and
the Criminal Justice (Children) (Northern Ireland) Order 1998 would be among the most
significant. In the Republic of Ireland the Child Care Act (1991), the Children Bill
(1996), and the Education Act (1998) mark significant changes in policy and legislation.
Twenty-five years of developmental 4
Some of the many other changes in the social context of children’s development in the
1990s are discussed by Greene and Moane in the current issue. The last decade of this
century has clearly been a time of significant legislative change for children in Ireland.
In addition to these changes in legislation the 1990s have also been significant in that a
number of research units have been established with a specific remit to focus on the lives
of children and adolescents. These include the Centre for Child Care Research in
Queen’s University in Belfast, the Children’s Research Centre in Trinity College Dublin,
the Early Childhood Research Unit in the Dublin Institute of Technology, and the Child
Studies Unit in University College Cork. Although all these research centres are based in
academic institutions, many involve close collaboration with voluntary and/or statutory
agencies. The establishment of these research centres would suggest that there is an
increasing interest in conducting research to further our understanding of children’s lives
and a growing recognition of the need to apply research to contemporary social and
policy issues.
The 1990s have also seen the Irish and UK governments ratify the UN Convention on the
Rights of the Child, reflecting a commitment to the fulfillment of children’s needs as a
discrete group. The governments are now required to demonstrate to the United Nations
Committee on Human Rights that they are meeting their obligations under the terms of
the treaty. This could be expected to generate further need for research, and especially
programme evaluation.
Twenty-five years of developmental 5
Together these developments suggest that our views of children and childhood are
undergoing change and that this might be an appropriate time for those with an interest in
developmental psychology to ask some questions about the nature of the subject in
Ireland. In this paper we aim to address the following questions: What research topics
are pursued by developmental psychologists? What methods do they use in their
research? What age groups do they focus on in their research and writing? Does the
research have a theoretical or an applied focus? Although a review article necessarily
looks back on previous publications, a further aim is to provide a resource and guide for
researchers who may be planning new research programmes and who may wish to
identify areas which have been under-researched in Ireland.
Identifying publications
The publications for inclusion in the present review were identified using two
computerised CD-ROM databases – PsycLit and ERIC. PsycLit is published by the
American Psychological Association and provides access to journals and books published
around the world in Psychology and related disciplines. Over 1300 journals are included
in the database and over 50,000 references are added annually. ERIC is published by the
U.S. Educational Research Information Center and covers articles from approximately
980 education-related journals. The databases are widely used, nationally and
internationally, as a source of peer reviewed journal articles and books. Both databases
were searched with identical search terms in a variety of combinations. These terms
were: Ireland, Irish, infant, child, children, adolescence, childhood, childcare, parent,
parenting, teachers, teaching, child rearing, and socialisation. The terms Ireland and Irish
Twenty-five years of developmental 6
were used as a means of identifying publications of authors based at Irish institutions
and/or those which included an Irish sample. In addition, we used search terms that deal
with development beyond childhood, including adult development, aging and life span
development (as well as all variants of these terms). All English language publications
that appeared between 1974 and 1998 are included. There are limitations to using these
databases as sources of information on child development publications in Ireland. For
example, the searches only produced information on the institutional affiliation of the
first author, therefore, publications where the only author based at an Irish institution has
second or subsequent authorship are excluded. The review does not include government
reports or other research published in the form of reports. Furthermore, some journals are
not covered in these databases for all of the twenty-five year period and individual
articles may have been excluded by the databases if their content was not deemed
relevant to psychology or education by the database compilers.
The searches produced references for a total of 336 publications 1 and the abstract for
each publication was read to determine the primary subject matter of the article, the
methods and research designs used and the age group of the participants.
What topics have been studied?
As indicated in Figure 1, annual publications in the field of developmental psychology
have risen steadily over the last twenty five years. In the five years from 1974 to 1978 the
average annual number of publications was just three. In contrast, there was an average
of 23 publications per year in the five years from 1994 to 1998. This trend suggests a
Twenty-five years of developmental 7
growing interest in developmental psychology. Although the overall trend is for an
increase in the number of publications, the data presented in Figure 1 also indicates that
there have been changes over the years in the subject matter of the published articles and
books.
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Figure 1 about here
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There are many possible ways of grouping the subject matter of the articles reviewed. We
have chosen a system based on broad categories: ‘social functioning’, ‘cognition’,
‘clinical issues’, ‘education’, measurement’ and ‘public policy’. The first of these,
‘social functioning’, includes all articles relating to interpersonal interactions including
topics such as peer relationships, family relationships, and social and ethnic identity.
Publications on social functioning have remained at a high level over the entire twentyfive years mirroring the overall increase in annual publications. The largest number of
articles under this heading relates to the conflict in Northern Ireland as a context for
children’s development. These publications include empirical, conceptual and review
articles and books dating back to the mid 1970s. Together they represent a considerable
body of knowledge on the impact of the Northern Ireland conflict on children’s lives,
(e.g. Cairns, Hunter & Herring, 1980; McWhirter, 1983; Robinson & Brown, 1991;
Waddell & Cairns, 1991; Cairns, 1994; Muldoon & Trew, 1995; Ferguson & Cairns,
1996; Byrne, 1997; Muldoon, Trew & McWhirter, 1998). Some of the more recent
1
A full list of references is available from the first author on request.
Twenty-five years of developmental 8
articles reflect contemporary political issues and include, for example, research
comparing attitudes to war and peace before and after the paramilitary ceasefires (e.g.
McLernon, Ferguson & Cairns, 1997).
Articles classified as ‘cognition’ for the purposes of the present review include such
topics as language, reasoning skills, social cognition, and learning. Although the number
of publications has risen annually the increase has not been as great as in some other
areas of child development. No single topic dominates the publications but aspects of
reading and early language development emerge as themes. Research on reading has
included analyses of reading errors (Harding, Beech & Sneddon, 1985), dyslexia (to
which a previous special issue of this journal was devoted (Whyte, 1989)), children’s
perceptions of the functions of reading (Greaney & Neuman, 1983) and skill levels
among Braille readers (Boyer, 1997). Publications on language development include
Hickey’s (1990, 1991) research on the acquisition of Irish during infancy as well as
studies of bilingualism (Cummins, 1978) and second language acquisition (Lynn &
Graham, 1993).
Two themes emerging strongly from the publications on ‘clinical issues’ are drug
use/misuse and behaviour disorders. The majority of the publications on drug use
involved measures of young people’s drug usage, the correlates of such usage and/or
attitudes to legal and illegal drugs (e.g. Grube & Morgan, 1986; Grube, Morgan & Seff,
1989; Morgan & Grube, 1989; Grube & Morgan, 1990; Loretto, 1994; van Reek,
Adriaanse & Knibbe 1994; Ager, et al., 1996). Since the early 1990s there has also been
Twenty-five years of developmental 9
a number of publications focusing on parental drug use and its implications for children’s
development. These have included research on the implications of maternal use of
alcohol for infant development (Nugent, Greene, Mazor, 1991; Nugent, Lester, Greene,
Wieczorek-Deering, 1996), patterns of drug use among mothers whose children were
attending a child psychiatry clinic (O’Neill, Fitzgerald & McGee, 1991), and a review of
the development of children of opiate and cocaine users (Hogan, 1998).
Publications on behaviour disorders in children have included research on correlates such
as maternal depression (Cody & Fitzgerald, 1989; Mohan, Fitzgerald & Collins, 1998)
substance misuse (Grube & Morgan, 1990) and self esteem (Murphy, Fitzgerald,
Fitzpatrick & Kinsella, 1988). Other research has investigated the prevalence of
behaviour disorders in specific populations including children of psychiatric inpatients
(O’Leary, Fitzgerald & Nardu, 1989) and families of low socio-economic status (Stone,
Fitzgerald & Kinsella, 1990).
In addition to the themes already identified there were smaller numbers of publications
on depression, especially among adolescents (Donnelly & Wilson, 1994; Houlihan,
Fitzgerald & O’Regan, 1994; Donnelly, 1995) and sexual abuse and its sequellae (e.g.
O’Neill & Gupta, 1991; Browne, Keating & O’Connor, 1998; Horgan, Cassidy &
Corrigan, 1998). It is worth noting that the increases in publications on topics of clinical
interest occurred over a time span when the profession of clinical psychology was
becoming established and clinical training programmes were being set up in Ireland.
Twenty-five years of developmental 10
Many of the early publications on educational issues focused on teachers’ perceptions of
their pupils, including their personalities (Greaney, 1974), intelligence (Whyte, 1974),
school progress (Airasian, Kellaghan, Madaus & Pedulla, 1977) and competence
(Granleese, Turner & Trew, 1989). Since the mid 1980s there has been a large number of
publications on the measurement and correlates of school children’s performance on IQ
tests, most from a group of researchers in the University of Ulster. Correlates of IQ that
have been investigated include reading (Holland, 1989), head size (Lynn, 1989), family
environment (Lynn, Hampson & Agahi, 1989), reaction time (Lynn & Wilson, 1990),
musical ability (Rae & McAnulty, 1995), gender (Lynn, 1996) and blood iron levels
(Lynn & Harland, 1998). Other publications have offered explanations for observed
gains in IQ performance. Lynn (1989) argues that increases are consistent with
improvements in nutrition whereas Carr (1993) links the changes to quality of life and
greater intellectual stimulation.
Two further themes in the education publications are also notable. The first relates to the
development of children with intellectual disabilities including their play activities
(McEvoy & McConkey, 1983), mathematical ability (McEvoy & McConkey, 1990,
1991) and social skills (McDonald & Mackay, 1997). A further group of publications has
explored patterns of early education provision (Hayes & McCarthy, 1992; Horgan &
Douglas, 1995; Hayes, 1996; O’Flaherty & Hayes, 1997) and usage (Hennessy & Hayes,
1997).
Twenty-five years of developmental 11
Two further categories of publications with a much smaller number of articles in each
were also included. The first of these we have called ‘measurement’ and included within
this category are articles whose primary focus was the psychometric properties of
standardised tests or the establishment of Irish norms for tests developed in other
countries. Finally, publications analysing ‘public policy’ only emerge in the last few
years and all are conceptual rather than empirical.
The most obvious trend in research in child psychology in Ireland over the last twentyfive years is the increase in volume. In 1998 there were 800% more publications than in
1974, a clear indication of expansion of research in this field. One surprising feature of
this overall increased output is that research on cognitive development lagged behind
expansion in the field as a whole. This is surprising, given that cognitive development is
an area of substantial expansion in other jurisdictions (Lutrey, 1994; Davis & Lewis,
1990). In 1990 Davis and Lewis, commenting on research trends in developmental
psychology in the UK, highlighted the prominence of research on cognitive research, and,
particularly in recent years, of research on children’s theory of mind. By contrast, no
publications on theory of mind were generated by our search of the Irish literature.
What methods and research designs have been used?
In addition to charting changes in the subject matter of interest to researchers it is also
worth noting the changes in the dominant methodologies used. Figure 2 presents a
breakdown of the methodology employed in empirical studies and this illustrates the fact
that quantitative methods have been used most commonly, with rating scales and
Twenty-five years of developmental 12
standardised tests as the two most popular quantitative methods. Qualitative methods and
studies employing a mixture of quantitative and qualitative methods have been much less
common. Indeed it can be seen from Figure 2 that qualitative and mixed method studies
have fallen as a proportion of empirical studies in recent years. Of the qualitative
methods used, interviews were by far the commonest with a smaller number of studies
using observation and forms of content analysis. This decline in qualitative methods
stands in contrast to trends identified in other similar reviews. For example, Nakazawa
and Shwalb (1997) identified a shift away from quantitative methods in favour of
qualitative methods in Japanese developmental psychology.
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Figure 2 about here
________________________
While details of research design are not always clearly presented in an abstract it was
noticeable that few of the publications included in the present review used a longitudinal
research design over an extended period of childhood. Exceptions include the Dublin
Child Development Study (e.g. Greene, Nugent, Wieczorek-Deering, O’Mahony, 1991;
Nugent, et al., 1991, Wieczorek-Deering, Greene, Nugent & Graham, 1991; Nugent,
Lester, Greene & Wieczorek-Deering, 1996), the IEA Preprimary Project (e.g.
O’Flaherty & Hayes, 1997) and Whyte’s (1993) study of the impact of language
intervention on reading. A number of other studies used a longitudinal design over a
much shorter period of time, for example, Hickey’s study of language acquisition (1990,
1991), Grube & Morgan’s (1990) study of adolescent attitudes, Cairns, McWhirter, Barry
Twenty-five years of developmental 13
& Duffy’s (1991) research on psychological well being in late adolescence and Lynn &
Harland’s (1998) research on the impact of iron supplements on adolescents’
performance.
What age groups have been included?
Although our main focus was on childhood, we were also interested in the extent to
which psychological research in Ireland deals with lifespan issues. Our search terms
therefore included ‘adult-development’ and ‘ageing’. The data presented in Figure 3,
however, clearly suggest that developmental psychology in Ireland is primarily the study
of childhood. Furthermore, this body of research deals with a limited age range within
childhood. The majority of studies focus on primary and secondary school children. We
could find just 12 publications (3.8%) on the neonatal period and infancy (birth to 2
years) and a further 13 (3.8%) on children of pre-school age (three to five years). Adults
have rarely been studied in their own right as developing individuals although a very
small number of articles (5, or 1.4 %) have studied ageing populations (65 years plus). It
is clear that we know little of about development between the ages of 21 and 65 in the
Irish context. Exceptions include, for example, Veeder’s (1992) study of women’s
decision making across the life span and Rogers’ (1992) comparison of Eastern and
Western approaches to adult education, comparing the experiences of England, Ireland
and India. These trends stand in contrast to those identified in Britain and Japan. Thus,
Davis and Lewis (1990) classified infancy as a flourishing topic in British developmental
Twenty-five years of developmental 14
psychology. In Japan, Nakazawa & Shwalb (1997) suggested that developmental
psychology was expanding to increase more research on lifespan development.
________________________
Figure 3 about here
________________________
Although adults have typically not been studied in their own right there are three types of
study in which adults have been included. The first is in the literature on relationships
between children and adults (typically parents and teachers). Examples include Mohan,
et al.’s (1998) study of the relationship between maternal depression and childhood
behavioural problems and Fitzpatrick, Molloy and Johnson’s (1997) study of a pilot
project extending the ‘Community Mothers’ programme to the travelling community.
The latter study focused not just on the children’s health and development but also on the
well being of the mothers. Secondly, adults have been included within some crosssectional studies that attempt to understand development from a life-span perspective.
An example of such a study is deRoiste’s (1998) research on sources of worry and
happiness across five age groups from twelve to 65+ years. Thirdly, adults have been
used as a source of information about their childhoods in retrospective studies, most
commonly in studies of clinical populations. For example Browne, et al. (1998) and
Horgan, et al. (1998) examined histories of childhood sexual abuse among adult drug
users.
Twenty-five years of developmental 15
Basic or applied research?
Because academic researchers have at times been criticised for not studying real-life
problems it is important to question the extent to which developmental psychology has
relevance for the lives of children in Ireland today. At one level it is clear that most of
the articles reviewed would be classified as basic research because they constitute a
contribution to the scientific understanding of the issue in question. However, they could
be considered to be applied if the definition of applied refers to the relevance of the topic
for children’s lives (Sigel, 1998). Thus the majority of articles on the context of Northern
Ireland political violence would be classified as basic research because they endeavour to
understand the nature of the impact of political violence on children’s lives and
development (e.g. Cairns 1974). However, through their contribution to our
understanding of how and why children develop in situations of conflict they are clearly
focused on topics of relevance to children’s lives.
There is another sense in which research can be relevant to children’s lives and this is
through the measurement of the impact of changes in relevant public policy and
legislation. It is clear that few of the articles were specifically designed to measure the
impact of a specific change in policy or legislation. This does not mean, however, that
the empirical articles contain no information of use to policy makers and legislators. We
have already discussed research on young people’s attitudes to drug use, for example, and
findings from such studies have potential to inform those wishing to target public health
messages for young people. There are also examples in the literature of research
evaluating services, thus providing useful information to those who might wish to extend
Twenty-five years of developmental 16
or modify services in specific ways. Examples include Archer and Kellaghan’s (1975)
evaluation of an intervention programme for disadvantaged children; Barker’s (1992)
research on the effectiveness of the health visitor programme and Fitzpatrick, et al.’s
(1997) research on the extension of the ‘Community Mothers’ programme to the
travelling community. The literature contains countless further examples of research
with potential applications to children’s lives at home and in school.
Despite the potential of existing research findings to inform policy makers and legislators
there are also some surprising omissions from the research literature. For example,
despite the public debate surrounding the legislation on marital separation and divorce we
found no research looking at parental separation from children’s perspectives. Caution
should be used in reaching conclusions about these findings, however, since it was
beyond the scope of this review to account for publications that are not picked up by
PsyLit and ERIC and the list of publications generated by our searches cannot be viewed
as comprehensive. For example, Greene (1995a, 1995b) published two papers on the
issue of the effects of divorce on children, which are omitted from PsycLit and ERIC
databases. Furthermore, these databases do not necessarily cite research reports, even
those that are published and that have a psychological focus. Research reports, including
those commissioned by government departments and voluntary agencies and/or produced
by research centres, form an important component of Ireland’s overall research output,
however, and arguably have a more immediate impact on policy making than papers
published in peer-reviewed journals. The searches we conducted did not, for example,
include reports such as ‘Strengthening families for life: Final report of the Commission
Twenty-five years of developmental 17
on the Family’ (1998), or ‘National Child Care Strategy: Report of the Partnership 2000
Expert Working Group on Childcare’ (1999), both of which were commissioned by
government departments and which themselves draw on and report on recent
psychological research concerning children. Neither did our search produce reports
published by research centres, but which clearly contain developmental psychological
research, such as Hayes, O’Flaherty with Kernan’s (1997) ‘A window on early education
in Ireland: report of the IEA pre-primary project’, or Hogan’s (1997) ‘The social and
psychological needs of children of drug users: Report on an exploratory study’.
Notwithstanding these important limitations, however, this review indicates that there is a
low level of publishing in peer reviewed journals and books on topics relevant to applied
social issues.
Conclusions
While developmental psychology in Ireland is clearly in a strong position it is important
to acknowledge that we are unlikely ever to be able to conduct the volume and variety of
research that takes place in neighbouring Britain and in the United States. Cross-cultural
research involving Irish, British and/or U.S. samples would establish whether other
research findings from those countries could be generalised to the Irish context. For
example, if we had detailed data on the context of childcare in Ireland in comparison to
childcare in Britain and the United States we could determine whether the findings of
many hundreds of research projects carried out in those two countries could be
generalised to Irish children.
Twenty-five years of developmental 18
The most notable absences from research in child psychology in Ireland are nationally
representative longitudinal studies. With recent dramatic social changes, including
legislation on divorce, a booming economy, increasing cultural and ethnic diversity and
new legislation acknowledging children rights, the need for such studies is now clear. In
the absence of nationally representative longitudinal studies fundamental questions about
the unique influences of the changing Irish context on the development of children cannot
be addressed. The use of a cohort-sequential design (Baltes & Nesselroade, 1979) would
be particularly appropriate for understanding how children of different ages are
influenced by social changes. In the UK, by comparison, there have been several large
scale nationally representative cohort studies of children, including the National Child
Development Study (Ferry, 1993), and the 1970 British Cohort Study (Bynner, Ferri &
Shepherd, 1997). Such studies allow for investigation of the causal impact of policies
and programmes on children’s development, and generate data for investigation of basic
research questions about child development. The large data bases created by these
studies can be made available to a wide range of researchers, thus increasing
exponentially the questions that can be addressed. Investment in studies of this kind in
Ireland would greatly expand the scope and volume of research in child psychology.
Twenty-five years of developmental 19
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