This chapter is for all academics, from students and faculty to professional staff at research centers and institutions. The content draws upon our experiences from when we were budding scholars, to experienced scientists, and now administrators, including time spent at federal funding agencies. Our aim is to provide information to scholars so that you can write more competitive grant proposals and secure greater resources for your research and scholarship. First, we provide a broad overview of what to consider before you embark upon writing a proposal. Then, we discuss areas for consideration in writing the proposal itself. Finally, we share steps to consider after you have received feedback about your proposal. We also provide some detail about particular funders, including support for international scholarship. As with all scholarship, persistence, collaboration, and support from colleagues are helpful for successfully securing external funding.

Children are prosocial from a young age onward, but their prosocial actions are not necessarily egalitarian. From around 4 years of age children tend to help and share more with in-group members compared with out-group members. However, a growing body of findings also suggest that sometimes children act more prosocially toward out-group members. How can we reconcile such seemingly contradicting behaviors? Here, the author describes how the salience of group stereotypes might shed light on these inconsistent findings. Specifically, different helping contexts can activate different group stereotypes. These different stereotypes could lead children to sometimes act more prosocially toward in-group peers, but sometimes show out-group bias in their helping or sharing behavior. Taking into account group stereotypes in children’s prosocial behavior will provide a deeper understanding of the underlying motivations that lead to selective prosociality in children and, in the long run, contribute to combating discrimination and prejudice early in life.

To survive and prosper, researchers must demonstrate a successful record of publications in journals well-regarded by their fields. This chapter discusses how to successfully publish research in journals in the social and behavioral sciences and is organized into four sections. The first section highlights important factors that are routinely involved in the process of publishing a paper in refereed journals. The second section features some factors that are not necessarily required to publish a paper but that, if present, can positively influence scientific productivity. The third section discusses some pitfalls scholars should avoid to protect their scientific career. The last section addresses general publication issues within the science community. We also recommend further resources for those interested in learning more about successfully publishing research.

There is limited research examining community and neighborhood influences on prosociality in children and youth. In this chapter we outline three relevant theories that address how neighborhood and community processes influence prosocial behavior and review the empirical literature on the topic. Our review suggests that measures of neighborhood socioeconomic status, demography, and disorder have little direct association with prosociality in children and youth but that adolescent prosocial behavior is linked to social capital and collective efficacy. The community intervention evidence shows that providing increased opportunities for prosocial involvement may support greater prosocial behavior of adolescents, possibly by boosting community social capital. Further development of more specific theoretical models and further empirical research is required to better understand the complex neighborhood and community mechanisms across neighborhoods, cities, nations, and cultures.

This chapter examines four prominent online research methods – online surveys, online experiments, online content analysis, and qualitative approaches – and a number of issues/best practices related to them that have been identified by scholars across a number of disciplines. In addition, several platforms for conducting online research, including online survey and experimental design platforms, online content capture programs, and related quantitative and qualitative data analysis tools, are identified in the chapter. Various advantages (e.g., time saving, cost, etc.) and disadvantages (e.g., sampling issues, validity and privacy issues, ethical issues) of each method are then discussed along with best practices for using them when conducting online research.

For four decades, developmental scientists have been examining the links between children’s and adolescents’ prosociality and the activity of their peripheral physiological systems. In this chapter, we review the theories and studies that evaluate these links. In particular, we emphasize that the developmental psychophysiology of prosociality needs to be understood as involving dynamic and nonlinear processes occurring within the immediate contexts of evocative situations and shaped by the enduring contexts of close relationships.

This chapter explores the nature of the work that researchers in the social and behavioral sciences do through a discussion of the ethical principles that ought to guide their work. Since academic researchers have different perceptions and attitudes regarding what constitutes (un)ethical research, we offer an overview of what is considered best practices in social and behavioral science research. This work focuses primarily on the ethical issues related to the design, development, implementation, and publication of research projects. It concludes with a guide for assisting research teams and research ethics committees in assessing the honesty, authenticity, and accountability of their research programs.

There has been much debate on the origins of prosocial behavior: do humans come into the world ready to help others, or is this something that must be learned? In this chapter, we approach this question by examining evidence on the ontogenetic and phylogenetic roots of prosocial behavior. First, we examine work with young children, focusing on the earliest developing prosocial behaviors of helping, comforting, and sharing. We then complement this developmental evidence with studies on chimpanzees and bonobos to gain insight into which elements of prosocial behavior might be evolutionarily inherited. Taken together, this evidence suggests that humans have a biological predisposition for prosocial behavior that we share with our ape cousins and that human-specific socialization practices build on this foundation throughout the course of development.

This chapter provides a brief introduction to multilevel models, specifically organizational models, and should be accessible to researchers who are familiar with ordinary least-squares (OLS) regression (i.e., multiple regression models). OLS regression assumes independence of observations; however, the responses of people clustered within organizational units (e.g., schools, classrooms, hospitals, companies) are likely to exhibit some degree of relatedness. In such scenarios, violating the assumption of independence produces incorrect standard errors that are smaller than they should be – multilevel modeling can alleviate this concern. However, the advantages of multilevel modeling are not purely statistical. Substantively, researchers may seek to understand the degree to which people from the same cluster are similar to each other and identify variables that predict variability within and across clusters. Multilevel analyses allow us to exploit the information in clustered samples and partition variance in the outcome variable into between-cluster and within-cluster variability. We can also use predictors at both the individual (level 1) and group (level 2) levels to explain this between- and within-cluster outcome variance.

Children in middle childhood, from about ages 6 to 12, are developing increased competencies that affect the ways in which they interact with others. Additionally, their contexts change, as they typically begin formal schooling and are exposed to different opportunities, challenges, and individuals with whom they interact. Considering these changes, it is important to consider both how these impact children’s prosocial development and how their prosocial behaviors support their development. In this chapter, we review the development of prosociality in middle childhood, highlighting key issues and central research findings, centering on the developmental tasks that are key to this age period. We also discuss issues and considerations in assessing prosocial development in middle childhood. Finally, we consider the implications for promoting a more just society through the promotion of prosociality and highlight future considerations for research.

What are statistics and why do we need them? This chapter introduces descriptive statistics and then creates a bridge from describing data concisely to answering questions using hypothesis testing and inferential statistics. The chapter leads the reader to an understanding of how descriptive statistics summarize and communicate meaning, based on data, and how they underpin inferential statistics. Research study examples, figures, and tables throughout the chapter explain the topics addressed by applying the ideas discussed. The chapter begins with the basics of descriptive statistics – normal distributions, options for displaying frequencies, measures of central tendency and variability, and correlations. The transition to inferential statistics covers standardization and the z-score, sampling, confidence intervals, and basics of hypothesis testing including Type I and II errors. We then introduce inferential statistics using three methods – t-tests, one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA), and chi-square tests.

This chapter provides an accessible introduction to experimental methods for social and behavioral scientists. We cover the process of experimentation from generating hypotheses through to statistical analyses. The chapter discusses classical issues (e.g., experimental design, selecting appropriate samples) but also more recent developments that have attracted the attention of experimental researchers. These issues include replication, preregistration, online samples, and power analyses. We also discuss the strengths and weaknesses of experimental methods. We conclude by noting that, for many research questions, experimental methods provide the strongest test of hypothesized causal relationships. Furthermore, well-designed experiments can elicit the same mental processes as in the real world; this typically makes them generalizable to new people and real-life situations.

Structural equation modeling (SEM) is a family of statistical techniques and methods for testing hypotheses about causal effects among observed or proxies for latent variables. There are increasing numbers of SEM studies published in the research literatures of various disciplines, including psychology, education, medicine, management, and ecology, among others. Core types of structural equation models are described, and examples of causal hypotheses that can be tested in SEM are considered. Requirements for reporting the results of SEM analyses and common pitfalls to avoid are reviewed. Finally, an example of evaluating model fit is presented along with computer syntax so that readers can reproduce the results.

Good research ideas and hypotheses do not just magically exist, begging to be tested; they must be discovered and nurtured. Systematic methods can help. Drawing on relevant scholarly literatures (e.g., research on creativity) and on the published personal reflections of successful scientists, this chapter provides an overview of strategies that can help researchers to (1) gather research ideas in the first place, (2) figure out whether an idea is worth working on, and (3) transform a promising idea into a rigorous scientific hypothesis. In doing so, it provides pragmatic advice about how to get good ideas and make the most of them.

Writing the paper is one of the most challenging aspects of a project, and learning to write the report well is one of the most important skills to master for the success of the project and for sustaining a scholarly career. This chapter discusses challenges in writing and ways to overcome these challenges in the process of writing papers in the social and behavioral sciences. Two main principles emphasized are that writing is (a) a skill and (b) a form of communication. Skills are developed through instruction, modeling, and practice. In terms of communication, the research report can be conceived as a narrative that tells a story. Sections of the chapter focus on identifying common barriers to writing and ways to overcome them, developing a coherent and appropriate storyline, understanding the essential elements of a research paper, and valuing and incorporating feedback.