ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the implications of a developmental process, presents a scaling procedure appropriate for assessing certain aspects of developmental processes, and illustrates the procedure with data pertaining to the family. A graphic comparison of the model of a developmental process being described with a Guttman scale should prove useful. The time-ordering of a developmental process is obviously determined by the placement of naturally-ordered pairs of items. As is well known from Guttman scaling procedures, setting observed errors in ratio to the number of responses made, and subtracting from unity, will produce an index which can be spuriously high due to marginal response probabilities. The scale accounts for about half of the responses which could have possibly been errors under the worst conceivable patterning of responses. Simply counting the number of errors is inadequate for assessing the utility of the scale.
