22 Chapter 1 idiographic approach. Both approaches have clear advantages and disadvantages – which I will introduce using a microscope metaphor1. Imagine someone looking through a microscope. Under the microscope’s lens is a large group of individuals. The person looking through the microscope can use different lenses. For example, choosing a lens that allows for a wide field of view on all individuals. By taking this broad perspective you can actually see what the sample looks like: which people look more or less alike and which people seem to differ. The conclusions drawn by looking through this lens ideally apply to many people. This broad perspective, however, also makes the view kind of blurry. The whole group is visible, but it is difficult to see much detail on any of the individuals within the group. To be able to see any individual in detail, the lens needs to be adjusted to one with a smaller field of view. Doing so allows a focus on a smaller subgroup or even one single person. This focus means that you have lost sight of all the others you might otherwise have been seeing using the wide-angle lens but the advantage of the narrow-angle lens, is that the view is much clearer and one can see detail on individuals. The conclusions you make about an individual may not apply to other individuals but do describe that individual better. Looking through the wide-angle lens is nomothetic science, while looking through the lens with a smaller field of view is idiographic science. Essentially, this dissertation is an illustration of how nomothetic and idiographic science can both contribute to care for young people with a mild intellectual disability. Reading guide to the chapters of this dissertation In the remainder of this introduction, I will provide a reading guide to the various chapters of this dissertation. This dissertation contains five chapters which – at face value – may seem quite different. The first two chapters assess the effectiveness of a substance abuse intervention. Then we evaluate the feasibility of daily self-monitoring. Another chapter concerns dynamic personality theory and network modeling. The last chapter then describes a case study about selfinjurious and aggressive patterns. I suspect that their coherence may not be glaringly obvious when reading the chapters separately, but there is an important commonality. The common denominator is that they all evaluate when and why problematic behaviors of young people with a mild intellectual disability change over time. In each chapter, the methodology with which change is assessed (i.e., the microscope lens) is different. The first chapter will start out nomothetic, 1 The inspiration for this microscope metaphor came to me from Anna Bosman, who had it from Thelen and Smith (1994).
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