Acculturation

A process of changing one’s culture by incorporating elements of another culture; a mutual sharing of culture

Assumptions

Something taken to be true without testing or proof

Biopsychosocial approach

An approach that considers human behavior to be the result of interactions of integrated biological, psychological, and social systems

Concepts

Words or phrases  that serve as abstract descriptions, or mental images, of some phenomenon

Constants

Long-term pattern of change in person and environment configurations that move invariably in one direction

Constructivist Perspective

Another name for the interpretist perspective, which assumes that reality is based on people’s definition of it, and research should focus on learning the meanings that people give to their situations

Cycles

Short-term patterns of change in person-environment configurations that reverse direction repetitively; can recur in daily, weekly, monthly, seasonal, or annual patterns or in some other regular pattern

Deductive Reasoning

A method of reasoning that lays out general, abstract propositions that can be used to generate specific hypotheses to test in unique situations

Determinism

A belief that persons are passive products of their circumstances, external forces, and/or internal urges

Dimension

A feature that can be focused on separately but that cannot be understood without considering its embeddedness with other features

Diversity

Patterns of group differences

Empirical research

A careful, purposeful, and systematic observation of events with the intent to note and record them in terms of their attributes, to look for patterns in those events, and to make our methods and observations public

Heterogeneity

Individual-level variations or differences among individuals

Hypotheses

tentative statement to be explored and tested

Interpretist perspective

Ways of understanding human behavior that share the assumption that reality is based on people’s definitions of it

Life course perspective

An approach to human behavior that recognizes the influence of age but also acknowledges the influences of historical time and culture

Life events

Incident or event that is brief in scope but is influential on human behavior

Linear time

Time based on past, present, and future

Multidetermined behavior

A view that human behavior is developed as a result of many causes

Multidimensional approach

An approach that understands human behavior as changing configurations of person and environment over time

Objective reality

The belief that phenomena exist and have influence whether or not we are aware of them

Positivist perspective

The perspective on which modern science is based. Assumes objective reality, that findings of one study should be applicable to other groups, that complex phenomena can be studied by reducing them to some component part, and that scientific methods are value-free

Postmodernism

A term used to describe contemporary culture as a postindustrial culture in which people are connected across time and place through global electronic communications; emphasis is on the existence of different worldviews and concepts of reality

Postpositivism

A philosophical position that recognizes the complexity of reality and the limitations of human observers; it proposes that scientists can never develop more than a partial understanding of human behavior

Privilege

Unearned advantage enjoyed by members of some social categories

Propositions

An assertion about a concept or about the relationship between concepts

Qualitative methods of research

Research methods that use flexible methods of data collection, seek holistic understanding, present findings in words rather than numbers, and attempt to account for the influence of the research setting and process on the findings

Quantitative methods of research

Research methods, based on the tenets of modern science, that use quantifiable measures of concepts, standardize the collection of data, attend only to preselected variables, and use statistical methods to look for  patterns and associations

Shifts

Sudden abrupt changes in direction of person-environment configurations

Subjective Reality

belief that reality is created by personal perception and does not exist outside that perception; the same as the interpretist perspective

Theory

A logically interrelated set of concepts and propositions, organized into a deductive system, that explain relationships among aspects of our world

Time orientation

The extent to which individuals and collectivities are invested in three temporal zones-past, present, and future time

Trends

Long-term patterns of change in person-environment configurations that move in a general direction but are not as invariable as constants

Voluntarism

The belief that persons are free and active agents in the creation of their behaviors