Commentary: Leapfrogging as a Principle for Research on Children and Youth in Majority World Settings
Abstract
I am writing this commentary while visiting the 30th International Congress of Psychology in Cape Town, South Africa. Looking at the program, I see that psychological research on non-Western populations and internationally comparative research seems to be much en vogue! However, much of the research I have seen left me—as a representative of a research funding organization—rather puzzled.
The first reason for my perplexity is that in my perception only very few internationally comparative studies offer a convincing theoretical rationale for the choice of their comparison countries or populations; in fact the choice almost always seems to be a question of convenience. The mere fact that one has a doctoral student from a particular country does not make that country a theory-driven choice of a comparison country for a study, does it? My additional observation—that Vietnam and Bali, two locations with some of the most beautiful beaches in the world, seem to be among the favorite comparison regions—may be just anecdotal, and I would leave it to the readers to draw their own conclusions.
A second observation is that many of the senior Western researchers moving into this area do not have experience in cross-cultural research or within the countries they target, but mostly engage in partnerships with researchers from Majority World countries. That alone is, of course, not to be seen as a criticism; on the contrary. However, I have also observed that in many of these projects, researchers from the West apparently convince their partners from the Majority World to work with dated methodologies or instruments, in many cases in order to simply replicate results from years ago. In my opinion, the mere answer to the question “does my result from country A replicate in country B?” is not a research question.
- Seiffge-Krenke et al. provide most convincing rationales for the countries their study looked at, and their results show that this careful choice was important;
- Ferguson studies her Jamaican sample with a state-of-the-art battery of instruments that would easily make its way through peer review if used in research in “Western” contexts; and
- Lai et al. conduct cutting-edge etiological prevention research (on a sample and under conditions you would not find in the Western world); and their research not only leads to internationally relevant scientific findings but will also inform local policy in South Africa.
This is the way to go, if we want to bring research on children and youth in non-Western contexts to the next level.
But is it enough? As a provocative challenge, I want to suggest leapfrogging as a principle for research on children and youth in the Majority World. The concept of leapfrogging was developed in economic research in the context of growth theories and innovation studies. It proposes that companies holding monopolies based on current technologies have less incentive to innovate than potential competitors, and therefore over time lose their technological leadership role, in particular when technological innovations are adopted by new firms which are ready to take risks. When these innovations eventually become new technological paradigms, the newcomer companies “leapfrog” ahead of the formerly leading firms. More recently—and more relevant to the topic of my commentary—the concept of leapfrogging has been used in the context of sustainable development for developing countries as a theory of development which may accelerate development by skipping inferior, less efficient, more expensive, or more polluting technologies and industries and move directly to more advanced ones. It is proposed that, through leapfrogging, countries in the Majority World can avoid environmentally harmful stages of development and do not need to follow the polluting development trajectory of industrialized countries. The adoption of solar energy technologies in developing countries is an example of bypassing the mistakes of highly industrialized countries that based an energy infrastructure on fossil fuels, and instead jumping directly into the solar age. The most prominent example, however, can be seen in countries which move directly from having no telephones to having cellular phones, skipping the stage of copper landline telephones altogether.
How does this relate to research on adolescents in the Majority World? I think the parallels are rather obvious. If we are serious about helping research in and on the Majority World to rise to current standards, then leapfrogging research methodologies and instruments seem to be the solutions of choice. I am therefore arguing that if researchers from the West are not willing or not able to work with state-of-the-art methods and instruments, then moving into research with populations and samples from the Majority World should not be an easy escape! Again: The mere replication of findings from years ago, using methods from years ago but only in another non-Western context, is not acceptable.
I therefore urge funding agencies to motivate researchers from the West to team up with partners from the Majority World in truly cutting-edge methodological research projects, some of which we can read about in this special issue. Only if this happens will research on child and youth development in Majority World settings make it into the mainstream of scientific publishing, which must be the aim of authors, editors, and publishers alike. Shouldn't it be our aim that we do not need a special issue on adolescent development in the Majority World anymore?
