Individual Productivity and Impact in Developmental Psychology

Individual eminence in developmental psychology was examined through a textbook citation analysis conducted on 10 current textbooks. For the 285 leading authors in this textbook citation study, data on individual research productivity in psychology (from 1983 to 1991) and on a subset of six journals of special importance for developmental psychology were obtained from the PsycLIT data base. An estimate of the scholarly impact of these authors was obtained from citation counts from the 1988-1991 volumes of the Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI). The diversity of research interests (e.g., cognitive and social development, public policy) and age groups currently studied by developmental psychologists are reflected in the list of top contributors. The development of the discipline could be described through future productivity studies such as this one.