Research Continuity

------------------------------
Carol Bradfield
Society for Research in Child Development
Washington, DC
cbradfield@srcd.org
------------------------------

I'm really glad that societies are thinking about these issues. But I often feel the proposals are underwhelming, given that we could be in this situation for more than a year.

Here's an analogy. In America, we tend to try to make sure that major snowstorms inconvenience us as little as possible. Cities are expected to get the snow cleared immediately. When I lived in Irkutsk, people just accepted that life in the winter was fundamentally different from life in the summer. In the summer, people worked *hard*. In the winter, they didn't necessarily work that much. Because you really couldn't.

I'm not saying we should stop working. But I think that trying to plow forwards and do what we always do as closely as possible is maybe not the right way to go about this. This article gets at this a little:


But I kinda feel like we should be much more bold in our planning and advice.

------------------------------
Josh Hartshorne
Boston College
Chestnut Hill MA
------------------------------

Original Message:
Sent: 03-23-2020 15:36
From: Carol Bradfield
Subject: APA resource for conducting research during the COVID-19 pandemic

APA's Board of Scientific Affairs offers advice on how to adapt your research projects amidst social distancing measures: Conducting research during the COVID-19 pandemic

------------------------------
Carol Bradfield
Society for Research in Child Development
Washington, DC
cbradfield@srcd.org
------------------------------

Two features of Josh Hartshorne's posting strike me as especially helpful.

First, he draws our attention to the importance of context. The tendency in Irkutsk for people to just accept that life in the winter was fundamentally different from life in the summer may well find some significant parallels in how people in different countries around the world respond to the emergence of covid-19 in their society and to the top-down controls introduced into their lives by public health authorities. Not only does the mortality associated with the disease compare differently across nations with the mortality rates of other locally or nationally prevalent diseases, but the range of options available for practising preventive measures such as social distancing and handwashing also varies both qualitatively and quantitatively as a function of housing, transport and marketing conditions. Moreover, although certain parameters of psychological research look rather similar across universities in the contemporary world, the notion of continuing "business as usual" by shifting data collection from ftf interaction to internet-mediated communication looks a lot less plausible in Zambia (and I suspect in most African universities) than in the USA, where I worked during the 1990s as the use of internet for scholarly communication and academic teaching was growing in leaps and bounds.

The second point that appeals to me in Josh's posting is his call for greater imaginative boldness. The pandemic affords an opportunity ("great chance" might sound a bit overly enthusiastic !) to consider alternative strategies for addressing big questions (as opposed to developing tactics for circumventing immediate constraints on the use of familiar research procedures). I am still trying to get my head around how best to conceptualise such big questions. Maybe I will share some preliminary ideas about that in a later posting.

------------------------------
Robert Serpell
Lusaka
------------------------------

Original Message:
Sent: 03-24-2020 10:56
From: Josh Hartshorne
Subject: APA resource for conducting research during the COVID-19 pandemic

I'm really glad that societies are thinking about these issues. But I often feel the proposals are underwhelming, given that we could be in this situation for more than a year.

Here's an analogy. In America, we tend to try to make sure that major snowstorms inconvenience us as little as possible. Cities are expected to get the snow cleared immediately. When I lived in Irkutsk, people just accepted that life in the winter was fundamentally different from life in the summer. In the summer, people worked *hard*. In the winter, they didn't necessarily work that much. Because you really couldn't.

I'm not saying we should stop working. But I think that trying to plow forwards and do what we always do as closely as possible is maybe not the right way to go about this. This article gets at this a little:

"While it's frustrating not to be able to do data collection, this is a great chance to work on a paper, take an online course, build that skill you were always saying you were going to do," says Teachman. "It's also a good time to write grant proposals."

But I kinda feel like we should be much more bold in our planning and advice.

------------------------------
Josh Hartshorne
Boston College
Chestnut Hill MA

Original Message:
Sent: 03-23-2020 15:36
From: Carol Bradfield
Subject: APA resource for conducting research during the COVID-19 pandemic

APA's Board of Scientific Affairs offers advice on how to adapt your research projects amidst social distancing measures: Conducting research during the COVID-19 pandemic

------------------------------
Carol Bradfield
Society for Research in Child Development
Washington, DC
cbradfield@srcd.org
------------------------------

Hi Robert -- part of what my group and a few of my collaborators are doing is doubling-down on massive online experiments. You can read more about our basic vision -- which we've been working on for a while -- here.

This approach has been really productive ... as long as you don't need subjects younger than 10 yo. I've had ideas for a while about how to do developmental research through this paradigm. I mean, there are tons of preschoolers using "educational" mobile apps right now! So if there was a good educational app made by researchers that collected longitudinal data, I expect the market would be there (assuming the app was sufficiently fun). There's a lot to work out in the details, though. And it's not cheap, so funding has to be found. 

Anyway, that's what I'm thinking about at the moment.

------------------------------
Josh Hartshorne
Boston College
Chestnut Hill MA
------------------------------

Original Message:
Sent: 03-27-2020 13:01
From: Robert Serpell
Subject: APA resource for conducting research during the COVID-19 pandemic

Two features of Josh Hartshorne's posting strike me as especially helpful.

First, he draws our attention to the importance of context. The tendency in Irkutsk for people to just accept that life in the winter was fundamentally different from life in the summer may well find some significant parallels in how people in different countries around the world respond to the emergence of covid-19 in their society and to the top-down controls introduced into their lives by public health authorities. Not only does the mortality associated with the disease compare differently across nations with the mortality rates of other locally or nationally prevalent diseases, but the range of options available for practising preventive measures such as social distancing and handwashing also varies both qualitatively and quantitatively as a function of housing, transport and marketing conditions. Moreover, although certain parameters of psychological research look rather similar across universities in the contemporary world, the notion of continuing "business as usual" by shifting data collection from ftf interaction to internet-mediated communication looks a lot less plausible in Zambia (and I suspect in most African universities) than in the USA, where I worked during the 1990s as the use of internet for scholarly communication and academic teaching was growing in leaps and bounds.

The second point that appeals to me in Josh's posting is his call for greater imaginative boldness. The pandemic affords an opportunity ("great chance" might sound a bit overly enthusiastic !) to consider alternative strategies for addressing big questions (as opposed to developing tactics for circumventing immediate constraints on the use of familiar research procedures). I am still trying to get my head around how best to conceptualise such big questions. Maybe I will share some preliminary ideas about that in a later posting.

------------------------------
Robert Serpell
Lusaka

Original Message:
Sent: 03-24-2020 10:56
From: Josh Hartshorne
Subject: APA resource for conducting research during the COVID-19 pandemic

I'm really glad that societies are thinking about these issues. But I often feel the proposals are underwhelming, given that we could be in this situation for more than a year.

Here's an analogy. In America, we tend to try to make sure that major snowstorms inconvenience us as little as possible. Cities are expected to get the snow cleared immediately. When I lived in Irkutsk, people just accepted that life in the winter was fundamentally different from life in the summer. In the summer, people worked *hard*. In the winter, they didn't necessarily work that much. Because you really couldn't.

I'm not saying we should stop working. But I think that trying to plow forwards and do what we always do as closely as possible is maybe not the right way to go about this. This article gets at this a little:

"While it's frustrating not to be able to do data collection, this is a great chance to work on a paper, take an online course, build that skill you were always saying you were going to do," says Teachman. "It's also a good time to write grant proposals."

But I kinda feel like we should be much more bold in our planning and advice.

------------------------------
Josh Hartshorne
Boston College
Chestnut Hill MA

Original Message:
Sent: 03-23-2020 15:36
From: Carol Bradfield
Subject: APA resource for conducting research during the COVID-19 pandemic

APA's Board of Scientific Affairs offers advice on how to adapt your research projects amidst social distancing measures: Conducting research during the COVID-19 pandemic

------------------------------
Carol Bradfield
Society for Research in Child Development
Washington, DC
cbradfield@srcd.org
------------------------------