The term reaction time (RT) describes the interval between the initial appearance of a stimulus and an organism’s response to that stimulus. Because RT data are notorious for substantial individual differences and positive skew, the overarching goal of this chapter is to equip researchers with sufficient knowledge to design RT studies that enhance experimental control, thereby reducing unwanted error variability. To accomplish this goal, the chapter discusses five major themes: (1) an overview of the evolution of RT research; (2) a discussion of the state of RT knowledge today, with a focus on moderating variables that researchers could control; (3) a review of some of the most common RT measures employed by contemporary social and behavioral scientists; (4) a description of specific technological tools that can be used to administer those measures; and (5) a discussion of basic considerations for statistical analysis of RT data.

Field research refers to research conducted with high degrees of naturalism. Compared with other research methodologies, field research can preserve the rigor of traditional laboratory research while augmenting the ecological validity and social impact of the research findings. The first part of this chapter provides a definition of field research and discusses its advantages and challenges. The second part of the chapter provides a brief overview of qualitative field methods and an in-depth overview of experimental field methods. It discusses different types of randomization schemes in field experiments, such as cluster randomization, block randomization, and waitlist designs. It further discusses the design and implementation concerns when conducting field experiments, including spillover, attrition, and non-compliance. The third part of the chapter provides an overview of some important considerations for conducting field research, including pilot testing, replicability and generalizability across contexts, and how geographical and technological advances impact field research.

Prolific is a website that offers researchers the ability to recruit and sample participants for online research. In contrast to earlier crowdsourcing platforms, such as Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk), it focuses primarily on academic and marketing research – typically done through online surveys and experiments. In this chapter, I aim to introduce this platform to researchers conducting online studies and to provide knowledge and practical advice on how to best use the platform for online research. The review includes explanations of how the site works, the composition of its pool of participants, the options available to researchers for sampling and recruiting participants online, how to achieve advanced abilities by connecting Prolific to research software (e.g., Qualtrics, Gorilla), and how to ensure high data quality when using Prolific. I then review the evidence on the current state of data quality on Prolific, suggesting that it can provide higher data quality than MTurk and also better than some commercial panels. I conclude with a summary of the advantages and disadvantages of using Prolific for online research and potential future developments in the platform that could promote more credible online research.

This chapter provides an introduction to the use of mobile sensing in social and personality psychology. It first looks at mobile sensing’s historical roots and discusses how, in the field, the method follows in the footsteps of other traditional approaches to the collection of behavioral data. It then covers research questions of the kind that mobile sensing lends itself to, and provides a high-level summary of the current literature on mobile sensing. In the third section, the chapter illustrates the very basic how-to of mobile sensing with respect to technical rationale, implementation in studies, and coverage of variables. The fourth and final section is a psychometric reflection on where mobile sensing currently stands and where it is or should be going. To this end, five predictions are evaluated that were made for mobile sensing research when it first emerged in the psychological research landscape about a decade ago.

Methodological approaches in social neuroscience have been rapidly evolving in recent years. Fueling these changes is the adoption of a variety of multivariate approaches that allow researchers to ask a wider and richer set of questions than was previously possible with standard univariate methods. In this chapter, we introduce several of the most popular multivariate methods and discuss how they can be used to advance our understanding of how social cognition and personality processes are represented in the brain. These methods have the potential to allow neuroscience measures to inform and advance theories in social and personality psychology more directly and are likely to become the dominant approaches in social neuroscience in the near future.

This chapter examines the role of self-disclosure and secrecy in adolescent–parent relationships from a social perspective, highlighting their importance in monitoring and regulating relationship quality and closeness. Although adolescent–parent relationships share characteristics with other close relationships, they also differ. Both these similarities and differences have implications for the dynamics of self-disclosure and secrecy. A distinction is made between intimate self-disclosure and routine disclosure – the daily details of life – both of which play a critical role in these dynamics. The chapter conceptualizes the adolescent–parent relationship, examines the nature of self-disclosure and secrecy, and explores their interrelations within adolescent–parent relationships. It also considers the variability of self-disclosure as influenced by social norms and cultural background. The chapter concludes with a discussion of future research directions, particularly in the context of evolving communication technologies, and their implications for understanding the dynamics of self-disclosure and secrecy between adolescents and their parents.

This chapter focuses on experimental designs, in which one or more factors are randomly assigned and manipulated. The first topic is statistical power or the likelihood of obtaining a significant result, which depends on several aspects of design. Second, the chapter examines the factors (independent variables) in a design, including the selection of levels of a factor and their treatment as fixed or random, and then dependent variables, including the selection of items, stimuli, or other aspects of a measure. Finally, artifacts and confounds that can affect the validity of results are addressed, as well as special designs for studying mediation. A concluding section raises the possibility that traditional conceptualizations of design – generally focusing on a single study and on the question of whether a manipulation has an effect – may be inadequate in the current world where multiple-study research programs are the more meaningful unit of evidence, and mediational questions are often of primary interest.

This chapter explains how researchers can design studies that include multiple methods. It starts by defining multiple-methods research as bringing together multiple perspectives at the methodological and other levels to obtain a deeper and more inclusive understanding of a phenomenon (and, in the end, to make a better-informed decision) than would be possible using one method alone. Using four real-life examples, Part I of the chapter shows the four consecutive steps of multiple-methods design: including multiple perspectives, exploring them, integrating their conclusions, and using this integrated conclusion to make a decision in practice. Part II shows that multiple-methods research is emergent and discusses the most important of these emergent elements: emerging aspects, focusing, searching for explanations, emerging data, and emerging subgroups. Part III discusses concepts that are relevant to combining qualitative and quantitative data sets: meaningful connections, purposes of mixing, theoretical drive, timing, and fully integrated research designs. The chapter concludes with recommendations for research with multiple methods.

Focus groups are a qualitative research method that involves a facilitated group discussion to elicit the perspectives of participants. They use group dynamics and encourage communication among research participants. Thus, focus groups are particularly useful for brainstorming ideas and to understand the reasons for differing opinions. They also have broad applicability in social and behavioral science, and the resulting findings can be used to inform practice and policy. This chapter provides an overview of focus group methods, including design, participant selection, conduct, and analysis. It also provides a guide to ensure rigor in conducting and reporting focus group studies. Considerations in conducting focus groups in specific populations, including children and culturally and linguistically diverse populations, will also be discussed along with considerations for using online platforms to conduct such studies.

Building a successful research career often requires being adept at the methods and tools of the time. For social and behavioral scientists today, that means navigating online participant platforms and the tools used to create online studies. In this chapter, we describe how Amazon’s Mechanical Turk (MTurk) can be leveraged as a source for participant recruitment. We provide a brief history of MTurk’s usage by researchers, describe the challenges researchers have faced with the site, and summarize the status of issues like data quality, sample representativeness, and ethics in online research. Along the way, we provide tips for how researchers can use MTurk to collect high-quality data and to start and advance a research career.

This chapter focuses on adolescents’ use of strategies to conceal information about their whereabouts, behaviors, and activities from parents. The chapter describes the concealing strategies assessed by researchers, adolescents’ relative use of strategies, and adolescents’ reasons for concealing information from parents. Concealment strategies range from partial disclosure to secrecy to lying. Most adolescents use partial and passive concealment strategies (e.g. omitting details) more often than active concealment strategies (e.g. lying). Adolescents conceal activities they believe to be personal and to avoid punishment. The chapter also summarizes research on potential implications of concealment for both the parent–adolescent relationship and the adolescent’s adjustment. Research evidence links the use of concealing strategies with poorer quality parent–adolescent relationships and with poorer behavioral and psychological adjustment. Recommended future directions include integrating research on concealment with the literatures on self-disclosure, lying, and secrecy outside the parent–child relationship, and further tests of the hypothesized benefits of concealment.

Language is the natural currency of most social communication. Until the emergence of more powerful computational methods, it simply was not feasible to measure its use in mainline social psychology. We now know that language can reveal behavioral evidence of mental states and personality traits, as well as clues to the future behavior of individuals and groups. In this chapter, we first review the history of language research in social personality psychology. We then survey the main methods for deriving psychological insights from language (ranging from data-driven to theory-driven, naturalistic to experimental, qualitative to quantitative, holistic to granular, and transparent to opaque) and describe illustrative examples of findings from each approach. Finally, we present our view of the new capabilities, real-world applications, and ethical and psychometric quagmires on the horizon as language research continues to evolve in the future.

This chapter reviews research on disclosure and secrecy in Turkish adolescents’ relationships with their parents in comparison with research from other cultures. Research on the topics, targets, and justifications of, and demographic differences in adolescent disclosure to and secrecy from their parents show that adolescents across cultures are more similar than different in managing their privacy with their parents. With development, adolescents construct their private and communal self, through selecting the topics to disclose, to whom to disclose, and the extent of disclosure. Disclosure and secrecy are similarly associated with parenting behaviors and well-being across cultures. Variations, however, stem from socioeconomic differences of families. Future research may consider going beyond broad categorizations of cultures (e.g. individualism and collectivism) and focus on the extent of convergence between the worldviews of adolescents and parents, which is likely to determine the scope and the frequency of sharing information with parents.

This chapter describes the use of eyetracking as an advanced research tool in the social and behavioral sciences. It covers the correlation of eye movements to behavior, the basic anatomy of the eye and its movements, and different kinds of eyetrackers that can be used to capture a range of behaviors. It also explains how one should select an eyetracker, and how to obtain good-quality data. Data quality always affects the final result, and this chapter explains how the accuracy and precision of gaze data affect behavioral analysis along with giving examples about the real-life application of eyetracking in social and behavioral research. The potential of eyetracking as a technology is vast, providing a window to the visual perception which is likely to make eyetracking a very important tool in the years to come.