Statistically evaluating person-oriented principles revisited

We are grateful for the four thought-provoking and informative Commentaries provided by expert scholars in personoriented and idiographic research. The Commentaries of Peter Molenaar; Eun Young Mun, Marsha Bates, and Evgeny Vaschillo; Nicholas Ialongo; and Alexander von Eye offer alternative perspectives on the extent of person-oriented theories’ testability using person-oriented methods in developmental psychopathology and the usefulness of this endeavor. For example, Mun et al. advocated person-oriented methods for exploratory data analysis rather than testing personoriented principles. In contrast, Ialongo emphasized using such methods to test one principle, whereas Molenaar emphasized testing all principles, with additional suggestions for how methods reviewed can do so. Von Eye also emphasized testing all existing principles, in addition to testing several new principles. This Authors’ Response focuses on comparing and contrasting these perspectives with each other and our own. It is our hope that this reply helps to move this dialog from the confines of this special section to the developmental psychopathology research community at large.