Using Daily Diary Assessments to Better Understand the Role of Parental Consistency in the Development of Externalizing Child Behavior

Introduction to the Special Issue: Novel Insights into the Externalizing Psychopathology Spectrum in Childhood and Adolescence from Intensive Longitudinal Data

Externalizing psychopathology is highly prevalent in children and adolescents. Yet, current understanding of the externalizing psychopathology spectrum is predominantly founded on cross-sectional and conventional longitudinal designs. Compared to these designs, intensive longitudinal data have greater ecological validity and provide insight into within-person fluctuations and short-term developmental dynamics. In this Special Issue, we bring together a selection of 10 innovative and original empirical articles to demonstrate the benefits of intensive longitudinal data for understanding the development of the externalizing psychopathology spectrum during childhood and adolescence, as well as one thoughtful commentary from leaders in the externalizing psychopathology field. In this Introduction to the Special Issue, we describe the articles included in this Special Issue in relation to study designs, timescales, samples, and statistical modeling techniques. We conclude by considering the implications of intensive longitudinal data for informing and enhancing our understanding of externalizing psychopathology with child and adolescent samples, as well as critical future research directions.

The Premise, Promise, and Challenges of Intensive Assessment and Dynamic Quantitative Methods for Child and Adolescent Externalizing Problems

This commentary discusses how papers from the Special Issue fill important gaps in the measurement and quantification of dynamic processes of child behaviors and parent-child interactions linked to child externalizing symptoms. After highlighting some of the innovative qualities of selected papers, challenges and future directions for the development of intensive measurement and dynamic quantitative methods are described. These topics follow from a developmental psychopathology framework that emphasizes measurement using both micro and macro methods, longitudinal research designs, and the recruitment of children that demonstrate clinically meaningful levels of externalizing problem behavior.