The Premise, Promise, and Challenges of Intensive Assessment and Dynamic Quantitative Methods for Child and Adolescent Externalizing Problems

This commentary discusses how papers from the Special Issue fill important gaps in the measurement and quantification of dynamic processes of child behaviors and parent-child interactions linked to child externalizing symptoms. After highlighting some of the innovative qualities of selected papers, challenges and future directions for the development of intensive measurement and dynamic quantitative methods are described. These topics follow from a developmental psychopathology framework that emphasizes measurement using both micro and macro methods, longitudinal research designs, and the recruitment of children that demonstrate clinically meaningful levels of externalizing problem behavior.