This chapter provides a categorization of mathematical and computational models, and discusses the purposes they serve and criteria for evaluating models. Models considered include statistical models, descriptive models, measurement models, structural models, baseline models, and models that provide theoretical accounts at different levels of theoretical analysis. Models serve to provide concise summaries of data, to provide theoretical accounts of data, to discriminate between competing theoretical accounts, and to provide measures of latent psychological variables and upper and lower baselines against which to contrast observed behavior. Criteria for evaluating models comprise goodness of fit in relation to model flexibility, consistency across applications, competitiveness, psychological validation, and generativity. Three social psychological models exemplify these issues, a Bayesian marginal model of pseudocontingencies, a source-monitoring model of illusory correlations, and the dynamic interactive model of person construal.

In this chapter we focus on associations between intrusive parenting, the parent–adolescent relationship, and adolescents’ information management strategies. Theoretically, parenting that threatens adolescents’ autonomy leads to suboptimal adolescent adjustment. We discuss when overprotective parenting, psychological control, behavioral control, and helicopter parenting may be intrusive and how they are associated with the parent–adolescent relationship and adolescent information management. We also consider parental intrusiveness and adolescents’ information management in two specific contexts, namely in relation to adolescents’ sexuality and media use. We suggest that an intrusive parenting environment is not the optimal way to promote healthy adolescent information management.

Social and personality psychologists have conducted surveys and experiments online for nearly twenty-five years. Researchers have used the Internet to ask questions about a wide range of topics, including racial bias, personality development, and attitude change. The frequency of conducting internet research has increased over time and understanding how to conduct online research has become a critical skill for psychologists. This chapter provides a general introduction to conducting survey and experimental research online. We outline how researchers can host and program internet studies, as well as their options for recruiting participant samples. We also cover important issues that researchers should consider about data quality, representativeness, generalizability, and upholding ethical standards. Throughout the chapter we discuss practices and guidelines that we view as optimal at the current time, and direct readers to additional literature that can further inform their thinking.

The process of questionnaire design has been done intuitively by investigators for decades despite a large literature being available to guide the process to yield maximally reliable and valid measurement tools. This chapter offers two conceptual frameworks involving (1) the cognitive processes involved in answering questions optimally, and (2) conversational conventions that govern everyday communication. We use these frameworks to explain a range of empirical evidence documenting the impact of question manipulations on responses. Topics covered include open vs. closed questions, rating vs. ranking, rating scale length and scale point labels, acquiescence response bias, multiple select questions, response order effects, treatment of non-substantive response options, social desirability response bias, question wording and order, questionnaire length, and considerations for internet surveys. In all, we provide a set of best practices that should be useful to all researchers.

This chapter presents a broad overview of the measurement of hormones, spanning from their collection in different biospecimens and the assay of hormones across laboratory strategies to a brief overview of statistical treatment and analysis that extracts the hormone of interest. We organize each section into a description of measurement tools followed by an agnostic analysis of the tools for their strengths, weaknesses, prospects, and pitfalls. We do not view any single approach as “best” or “optimal.” This view is commensurate with the production and cellular conversion of hormones – adaptive physiological processes that are not “best” or “optimal” but rather constantly changing biobehavioral markers that shift according to the demands of the environment. Measuring the hormone is just the beginning of exploring the multifaceted ways that hormones can inform health, development, morbidity, and mortality.

Over-time, repeated measures, or longitudinal data are terms referring to repeated measurements of the same variables within the same unit (e.g., person, family, team, company). Longitudinal data come from many sources, including self-reports, behaviors, observations, and physiology. Researchers collect repeated measures for a variety of reasons, such as wanting to model change in a process over time or wanting to increase measurement reliability. Whatever the reason for data collection, longitudinal methods pose unique challenges and opportunities. This chapter has three main goals: (1) to help researchers consider design decisions when developing a longitudinal study, (2) to describe the different decisions researchers have to make when analyzing longitudinal data, and (3) to consider the unique properties of longitudinal designs that researchers should be aware of when designing and analyzing longitudinal studies. We aim to provide a comprehensive overview of the major issues that researchers should consider, and we also point to more extensive resources.

This chapter challenges the traditional unidirectional view of parental monitoring by presenting a novel theoretical dynamic process model of parent–adolescent communication in which parents and adolescents causally influence each other. A review of empirical studies highlights that adolescents are active agents who strategically manage information from their parents. However, few studies have subjected the frequently hypothesized bidirectional processes to more rigorous within-family tests. Six studies with yearly intervals suggest that parent–adolescent communication about adolescent activities is bidirectionally related to adolescent outcomes. A handful of daily diary studies suggest that adolescents disclose more on days when there is more parental monitoring and when the quality of the relationship is better. What remains to be empirically determined is how real-time and everyday family functioning may explain the development of adolescent functioning. The chapter concludes with a discussion of four potential open questions for future research on transactional monitoring processes.

This chapter reviews methods to integrate hormones into theory and research in social and personality psychology. The advantages of hormones include identifying possible mechanisms that link the social environment to better physical and mental health; disadvantages include difficult psychological inference and multiple sources of variability. Three biological systems are reviewed, including the hypothalamic–pituitary axis, the hypothalamic–pituitary–gonadal axis, and neuropeptides, and six hormones are examined in depth. Following this review is a summary of the psychological and affective states most commonly linked to these hormones. The chapter then explores best measurement practices, important covariates, and temporal factors, including basal states, diurnal fluctuations, and reactivity, followed by how to measure, analyze, and interpret hormone data. It concludes with topics from social and personality psychology that profitably leverage hormonal data to advance theoretical and empirical research, including intergroup interactions, power and status, values, and emotions and affect.

Field research refers to research conducted with a high degree of naturalism. The first part of this chapter provides a definition of field research and discusses advantages and limitations. We then provide a brief overview of observational field research methods, followed by an in-depth overview of experimental field research methods. We discuss randomization schemes of different types in field experimentation, such as cluster randomization, block randomization, and randomized rollout or waitlist designs, as well as statistical implementation concerns when conducting field experiments, including spillover, attrition, and noncompliance. The second part of the chapter provides an overview of important considerations when conducting field research. We discuss the psychology of construal in the design of field research, conducting non-WEIRD field research, replicability and generalizability, and how technological advances have impacted field research. We end by discussing career considerations for psychologists who want to get involved in field research.

This introductory chapter was invited to serve the role of inspiring young people in social and personality psychology about research methods. I wrote it in a personal voice, telling stories and offering opinions about (a) the joy of doing research, (b) the challenges of doing research on “concepts” rather than visible things like cells and atoms, and (c) the importance of methods alongside theory – specifically an argument against the “theory-first” and “theory-as-all-important” view.

The purpose of this chapter is to review the contemporary methods used to collect and examine data on social media and to explore the common pitfalls of internet research. The discussion focuses on the importance of internet research while also reviewing common practices of data retrieval (e.g., crowdsourcing and snowball sampling). We will also explain a commonly used tool to analyze data collected using social media. Specifically, one section is dedicated to the Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count software (LIWC); another section focuses on a brief overview of machine learning (ML) techniques and data visualization. At the end of the chapter, we will also examine some common ethical concerns, focusing mainly on anonymity and privacy, while also giving a general overview on the European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Future directions for social media will then be addressed.

Welcome to the third edition of the Handbook of Research Methods in Social and Personality Psychology. The first two editions of this handbook – published in 2000 and 2014 – have played an important role in widening access to and utilization of cutting-edge methods in the field. Useful as these volumes have been, the science of personality/social psychology never sleeps when it comes to developing new and improved research methods. And so herewith we present a third edition, designed to capture some of the most influential and promising new methodological advances in our field.

This edition covers both traditional methodological topics that have seen advances in recent years and novel approaches of recent vintage. There are, of course, many other topics that could have been included. We’ve chosen content that we believe will be most relevant to the largest proportion of new scholars in the field.

Registered Reports provide one way to address shortcomings in the current way we manage research – from the design of studies to their publication. The format requires pre-specifying (1) why a design may crucially test a theory, (2) what auxiliary assumptions are required for the experiment to be such a test, (3) what outcome-neutral tests are required to test those assumptions, (4) what specific crucial tests will be used to test the theory (of the many tests that could be used), and (5) why those tests could provide evidence for no effect of interest given the proposed numbers of trials and participants. Reviewers and authors are then constructively involved in optimizing the study before it is performed. The agreement between reviewers and authors, as adjudicated by the editors, defines, in advance, the proposed method and analytic protocol, virtually guaranteeing acceptance of the paper, no matter what position, if any, the results support. In this chapter, I go through what problems the format solves and why it must be approached in a way that is little understood by people coming to it for the first time. Common pitfalls are also discussed. In all, the paper provides a roadmap for how readers, authors, and editors can approach Registered Reports.

This chapter discusses social-cognitive domain theory (SCDT) as a theoretical lens for studying parental monitoring and adolescents’ information management. Theoretical concepts are presented, social cognitive domains are defined, and research applying SCDT to parenting and adolescent information management is reviewed. Research on various beliefs (parental authority legitimacy, parents’ right to know about adolescents’ behaviors, adolescents’ obligations to disclose to and obey parents) and adolescents’ reasons for disclosing and concealing information are discussed and related to adolescents’ disclosure and nondisclosure. Distinctions are drawn between issues that are legitimately regulated by parents (i.e. moral, conventional, prudential issues) and those viewed as personal prerogatives and essential to autonomy and identity development. Developmental changes, cultural variations, and parent-adolescent discrepancies in beliefs are discussed, and explanations are considered for observed discrepancies between youth’s beliefs about obligations to disclose their risky behaviors and involvement in those behaviors. The chapter concludes with directions for future research.

This chapter is concerned with reliability as a key indicator of measurement quality in behavioral and social science research. It commences with a discussion of the basics and a definition of the reliability coefficient. The following section deals with the meaning, interpretation, and utility of the reliability concept. Subsequently, the focus is on the evaluation of reliability as well as its discrepancy from the popular coefficient alpha that has been widely used for a number of decades as an index related to reliability. The large-sample behavior of the alpha and scale reliability estimates is then discussed, as is the relationship between the reliability coefficient and that of standardized reliability. The conclusion points out the limitations of the procedures for reliability evaluation discussed in the chapter.