Mobile technologies, specifically smartphones, offer social scientists a potentially powerful approach to examine the social world. They enable researchers to collect information that was previously unobservable or difficult to measure, expanding the realm of empirical investigation. For research that concerns resource-poor and hard-to-reach…

As part of our NSF funded collaborative project on Data Sharing within Engineering Education Community, we conducted an empirical study to better understand the current climate of data sharing and participants' future expectations of the field. We present findings of this mixed method study and discuss implications. Overall, we found strong…

This study expands our knowledge of consent in linking survey and administrative data by studying respondents' behaviour when consenting to link their own records and when consenting to link those of their children. It develops and tests a number of hypothesised mechanisms of consent, some of which were not explored in the past. The hypotheses…

With the Internet advancements of information systems and social media channels, consumer data has become a valuable source for companies and social networking communities. These Internet businesses are allowed to use and share their customers' information, with minimal regulatory intervention other than in health and financial areas. This…

The emergence of longitudinal data systems over the past decade has provided exciting opportunities to better understand students' educational trajectories over time and institutions. The stark reality for today's high school students is that some form of postsecondary education is a necessary ticket of entry to a secure economic future. This…

This dissertation contributes to the society by providing mechanisms that can potentially increase the availability of valuable personal level information without sacrificing the privacy of citizens. We consider two settings by which personal level data can be made available to its users such as researchers, who then may use it for the benefit of…

Whether a study is qualitative or quantitative, the process of data collection is not as orderly as it may seem when described in published research reports, articles, or books. Data collection may be more challenging when conducting research across national and linguistic borders. In this article, I share and reflect upon the complex and messy…

Surveyed attitudes toward the importance of privacy, seriousness of various privacy invasions, organizations that are trusted or mistrusted, etc. Concluded, among other findings, that most respondents were wary of possible invasions of privacy by the government but preferred government regulation of data collection by private businesses to…

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)

The field methods for data collection in a research project on linguistic change and variation in the Philadelphia speech community, their origins and use, are described. Five working principles of the project are detailed: (1) there are no single style speakers; (2) styles can be ranged along a single dimension, according to the attention paid to…