Abstract :
We are grateful for the four thought-provoking and informative
Commentaries provided by expert scholars in personoriented
and idiographic research. The Commentaries of Peter
Molenaar; Eun Young Mun, Marsha Bates, and Evgeny
Vaschillo; Nicholas Ialongo; and Alexander von Eye offer alternative
perspectives on the extent of person-oriented theories’
testability using person-oriented methods in developmental
psychopathology and the usefulness of this endeavor.
For example, Mun et al. advocated person-oriented methods
for exploratory data analysis rather than testing personoriented
principles. In contrast, Ialongo emphasized using
such methods to test one principle, whereas Molenaar emphasized
testing all principles, with additional suggestions for
how methods reviewed can do so. Von Eye also emphasized
testing all existing principles, in addition to testing several
new principles. This Authors’ Response focuses on comparing
and contrasting these perspectives with each other and our
own. It is our hope that this reply helps tomove this dialog from
the confines of this special section to the developmental psychopathology
research community at large.
