Moving your behavioral research online
COVID-19 has affected research all over the world. With universities closing their campuses and governments issuing restrictions on social gatherings, behavioral research in the lab has ground to a halt. This situation is urgent. Ongoing studies have been disrupted and upcoming studies cannot begin until they are adapted to the new reality. At Volunteer Science, we’re helping researchers around the world navigate these changes. In this post, I’ll condense the most important recommendations we’re giving to researchers for translating their studies into an online format and recruiting virtual participants.
Collecting social media data for research
Human social behavior has rapidly shifted to digital media services, whether Gmail for email, Skype for phone calls, Twitter and Facebook for micro-blogging, or WhatsApp and SMS for private messaging. This digitalization of social life offers researchers an unprecedented world of data with which to study human life and social systems. However, accessing this data has become increasingly difficult.