The Pan-African Longitudinal Study: Renewing Psychology with Strong Tests of Universality and New Insights from the Most-Needed Region

Objective

Current psychological science relies predominantly on evidence from Western industrialized nations, a small minority of the world’s population. This limits the generalizability of findings and obscures how psychology is shaped by socio-cultural context. Longitudinal studies, which clarify how psychological phenomena develop and their antecedent factors, are absent outside wealthy countries. I propose to create the Pan-African Longitudinal Study (PALS) to generate the missing data most needed to elucidate the co-constitution of culture and the mind and to distinguish universal from culturally-specific aspects of psychology. In this large-scale longitudinal study I will overcome obstacles to longitudinal studies in low-income countries to test: (1) the lifespan development and role of the socio-cultural context on (a) mental health, (b) personality traits, and (c) religious engagement, and (2) the role of culture in (a) motivation, (b) values, and (c) beliefs. PALS will cover the key period of young adulthood with samples of 1,500 participants in each of Namibia, Kenya, South Africa, Uganda, Ghana and Nigeria, including over 100 ethnolinguistic groups and the rural villages and informal settlements left out of online research. PALS will provide valuable data that maximises scientific impact by balancing emic (bottom-up, localized) evidence from an underrepresented region for new distinctions, with etic (imported, universal) variables for global comparison. Quantitative surveys at six-month intervals will be supplemented with qualitative interviews and focus groups to explore local beliefs and idioms of distress. These new data and perspectives will advance knowledge on causal mechanisms and the ways the socio-cultural context shapes the mind, address areas of stagnant development in global mental health, inform debates across domains of psychology, and update long-held beliefs in the field based on limited data sources, to renew and revitalise psychological science.