ABSTRACT
To illustrate the consequences of person-environment interactions, and the manner in which past interactions might influence individuals’ future paths, this chapter follows the same young women from early adolescence through early adulthood. The girls who comprise the sample are the 557 females who were participating in the longitudinal project, Individual Development and Adjustment (IDA), in 1968. The community selected as a target for the IDA Project is located in the central part of Sweden. It includes both an urban and a rural area and has a well-developed educational system and a diversity of industry. The methodology the chapter employ for grouping individuals on the basis of pattern similarity is cluster analysis. For those who are unfamiliar with clustering techniques, a brief comparison to moderator analyses may be helpful. The procedures used to define homogeneous subgroups of individuals through cluster analysis are reasonably straightforward.
