Chapter 13: Extending the Trajectory Equifinality Model’s Conceptual and Methodological Toolkit to Account for Continuous Development

The ‘Trajectory Equifinality Model’ (TEM) offers social research a framework that can help us envision phenomena in a new, more active way, which is infused with dynamic movement and imagined futures. The TEM framework focuses on important episodes in individuals’ life trajectories, culminating in one shared Equifinality Point (i.e. stage, life outcome, stopping point, etc., for example, childbirth or university graduation) that is addressed per study. This framework has been developed by Tatsuya Sato, Jaan Valsiner and colleagues (e.g., Sato, Hidaka, & Fukuda 2009; Sato, Yasuda, Kanzaki, & Valsiner, 2014). While this framework is more structured than an anthropological approach, it is certainly more open-ended than a mainstream social psychology study employing a quantitative experimental design.