There is currently no universally adopted definition of rural either by government entities or by rural special education researchers. Yet, the replicability, generalizability, transferability, and validity of rural special education research is dependent upon the definition of rural researchers' use to situate their work. Examining the…

The growing popularity of generative artificial intelligence (AI) tools presents new challenges for data quality in online surveys and experiments. This study examines participants' use of large language models to answer open-ended survey questions and describes empirical tendencies in human versus large language model (LLM)-generated text…

Whilst research has always been political and politicized, an emerging theme in the area of research ethics and integrity (REI) is the increased politicization of REI itself in areas of scientific and/or political controversy such as climate change, gender dysphoria treatment, the management of pandemics and women's reproductive rights. One aspect…

Researchers increasingly have access to two types of data: (i) large observational datasets where treatment (e.g., class size) is not randomized but several primary outcomes (e.g., graduation rates) and secondary outcomes (e.g., test scores) are observed and (ii) experimental data in which treatment is randomized but only secondary outcomes are…

In this article, the authors address some of the scientific challenges associated with using observation as a research method. The authors ask how researchers contextualise and understand observation in terms of its theoretical underpinnings and how it is conducted. Using a vignette in the kindergarten context, the authors explore how observation…

Children's fuzziness leads to increased variance in the data, data loss, and high dropout rates in developmental studies. This study investigated the importance of 20 factors on the person (child, caregiver, experimenter) and situation (task, method, time, and date) level for the data quality as indicated via the number of valid trials in 11…

Narratives that dominant the discourse of the experiences of people of color, specifically in education settings, are incomplete. Therefore, identifying methodological approaches that emphasize the perspectives of minoritized groups is essential. Counternarratives have been applied to help (re)tell stories of the oppressed to challenge dominant…

In the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic, many research funding organizations were faced with the choice of suspending their peer review panels, or else continuing their decision-making processes virtually. Although seen part of a longer drive to make peer review more cost and time efficient as well as to combat climate and sustainability…

Conducting survey research in rural educational contexts presents unique challenges and requires specific methodological considerations. This article provides an overview of potential adaptations that may help support effective, valid, and impactful rural survey research and a brief review of survey research published in "Rural Special…

Over the past decade there has been a striking increase in the number of quantitative studies examining the effects of social mobility, with almost all based on the diagonal reference model (DRM). We make four main contributions to this rapidly expanding literature. First, we show that under plausible values of mobility effects, the DRM will, in…

The recognition that researcher discretion coupled with unconscious biases and motivated reasoning sometimes leads to false findings ("p-hacking") led to the broad embrace of study preregistration and other open-science practices in experimental research. Paradoxically, the preregistration of quasi-experimental studies remains uncommon…

Community violence has been identified as a pressing public health crisis in the United States. A wealth of research establishes robust connections between youth's exposure to community violence and an array of negative psychological outcomes. In this article, we argue that developmental scientists need to adopt a more expansive definition of…

Since 2018, colleagues from two research centers at Dublin City University have been collaborating to develop a measurement scale to assess individuals' ability to identify workplace bullying. Having agreed on an operational definition of the construct, an item pool of 26 workplace bullying scenarios, that is, short descriptions of…

In this article, we reflect on our experiences with teaching ethnographic skills and sensibilities to MSc students at a Dutch university. Using methods such as (self)observation, journaling and reflection, we highlight dilemmas (conceptual, practical, ethical) faced by students when doing ethnographic fieldwork and dilemmas that emerged in…

Background: A systematic review is a type of literature review that uses rigorous methods to synthesize evidence from multiple studies on a specific topic. It is widely used in academia, including medical and social science research. Social science is an academic discipline that focuses on human behaviour and society. However, consensus regarding…