A New Blog About Developmental Psychology: Gaining Entry Into the Psychology Blogosphere

Greetings to the developmental psychology world— and to those people who have merely stumbled upon this newly born blog, I hope that they will be interested as well. As a brand new member of the blogosphere, I would like to introduce myself. My name is Farrah Aldjufrie and I am a psychology major attending the University of Southern California. In creating this blog, I aim to explore current and important issues in developmental psychology. To preserve the goal of remaining up to date in the psychology world, I have embarked on a journey to discover the most relevant and dynamic resources on the Web, and have conveniently placed them in the linkroll (to the right). To find these resources I left no leaf unturned— starting from larger and broader search engines such as Google and Cuil, and then funneling down to explore narrower websites— organizations and associations dedicated precisely to developmental psychology. In between I scoured through directories, library indexes, governmental and health-affiliated websites, and vital news sources— all which led me to various astounding developmental psych web resources (like the Child Development Institute). Rather than just focus on websites, I similarly chose a few developmental psychology blogs as sources of information (such as The Human Odyssey).

In carefully and meticulously choosing the websites for the linkroll, I selected only those sites of utmost quality. I did this by employing the Webby Awards criteria—a standard of judging and selecting high-value websites. I chose those sites that displayed a wealth of knowledge and those that were visually pleasing to the eye and all the while, navigable. The sites on the linkroll meet these criteria and also entail sufficient interactivity and high authority: they are affluent organizations (developmentalpsychology.org), associations (American Psychological Association), and research centers, and therefore what is written on them can be trusted. These websites demonstrate a pleasing and informative overall experience.

As per craftily selecting the developmental psychology blogs, I followed what is known as the IMSA criteria, which allows one to carefully evaluate and assess different blogs. Anyone who is anyone can have their own blog so it is important to make sure that a blog is written by someone who cites their information. It is also important to look at who comments on their blog, who follows their blog, and if their blog is of influence. It is essential to look at the blog’s content, but also, at how the blog is written and how often the blog is updated. The best blogs are ones that are ‘alive’ and interactive, with valuable viewpoints that are forward and open about its biases. Blogs that are visually pleasing are important as well (note the strong aesthetics of the blogs in the image to the right).

I hope my readers will find this to be a strong and relevant blog in the contemporary research and academic world of developmental psychology.