Technological advances have led to an abundance of widely available data on every aspect of life today. Psychologists today have more information than ever before on human cognition, emotion, attitudes, and behavior. "Big Data in Psychological Research" addresses the opportunities and challenges that this data presents to psychological…

Longitudinal studies are commonly used in the social and behavioral sciences to answer a wide variety of research questions. Longitudinal researchers often collect data anonymously from participants when studying sensitive topics to ensure that accurate information is provided. One difficulty gathering longitudinal anonymous data is that of…

The abundance of student records housed in K-12 schools across the country represents a largely untapped resource in the study of behavioral phenomena among children. Careful review of these existing records affords educational researchers an alternative to the heavily used survey method of data collection. While record review studies are common…

State databases offer researchers the opportunity to conduct research using data collected by states. These databases contain financial, demographic, and accountability data. Accessing and acquiring data from these repositories, though, can offer challenges to scholars interested in conducting research. This brief describes the type of data…

This is the decade of data analytics and big data, but not everyone agrees with the definition of big data. Some researchers see it as the future of data analysis, while others consider it as hype and foresee its demise in the near future. No matter how it is defined, big data for the time being is having its glory moment. The most important…

In an effort to bring rigorous research into the education and social sciences field, the past decade had seen an increase in the advocacy of randomized controlled trials. The argument in favor of using randomized controlled trial is that one can evaluate the impact of an intervention in comparison to a control group with confidence during a…

Guidelines for protection of human subjects in survey research demand that research designs provide for subjects'"informed consent." This paper reports procedures employed within a study of marijuana and other drug use which were in compliance yet avoided problems of nonparticipation and the gathering of inaccurate information. (Author)