28 Chapter 1 form John will get and which one Kyla may receive. But how does one then model someone’s unique personality structure from EMA data? In Chapter 5 we apply an increasingly popular analytical technique called idiographic network modeling. This approach enables studying processes bottom-up: first modeling each individual separately to then later evaluate (dis)similarities in personality-related change processes between people with a mild intellectual disability. Crucially, idiographic modeling (or any other type of model) should be grounded on a theory about how one expects individual-level processes to unfold over time. The main focus of Chapter 5 is on (in)congruence between idiographic network modeling and principles of complex systems theory that originally inspired these models. I will preserve details on the theory, models, and their incongruences for this chapter, but will give one spoiler here: the microscope should – and can – be turned up even further. This is what we have done in Chapter 6, in which we have used the lens with the narrowest field of view: only focusing on one individual. In care facilities, professionals target and adapt to accommodate the needs of each individual client. This support requires understanding the individual and their problems. Caretaker Eric, for example, wanted to understand why Kevin started using weed again on that particular day. An understanding of when and why such behaviors occur would enable Eric to implement timely preventive efforts in the future, which is evidently preferable over managing problem behaviors after they already happened. As with Kevin, care professionals all ask themselves when and why behaviors occur. For example, when and why John has aggressive outbursts, when and why Naomi self-harms, and when and why Kyla plays truant. An answer requires information about person- and time-specific context. Problem behaviors are highly contextualized: at any point in time they emerge from an interaction between the person and specific situational factors, like a quarrel with a loved one, a stressful exam coming up, peer pressure, or a traumatic event. By examining the context, one can assess whether there are temporal associations between patterns of specific situational factors and patterns of problem behaviors. The focus of the microscope’s next lens is therefore to qualitatively examine time- and person-specific contexts and pinpoint those on an idiographic timeline of problem behaviors. Figure 6 visualizes what such information may add to the interpretation of a client’s timeline. The last chapter describes a case study of a person with a mild intellectual disability with chronic aggressive and self-injurious behavior. The chapter details a timeline that shows how those behavioral patterns changed from day to day over the course of 560
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