Qualitative research sample size determination has always been a contentious and confusing issue. Studies are often vague when explaining the processes and justifications that have been used to determine sample size and strategy. Some provide no mention of sampling at all, whilst others rely too heavily on the concept of saturation for determining…

Obtaining insights on the illicit consumption of endangered wildlife products is challenging, especially when the study objects are the super-rich. This research note draws upon my experience interviewing nearly 1,000 rhino horn consumers in Vietnam. Trust is crucial in such interactions. No interviews could have been conducted without good…

Infant research is often underpowered, undermining the robustness and replicability of our findings. Improving the reliability of infant studies offers a solution for increasing statistical power independent of sample size. Here, we discuss two senses of the term reliability in the context of infant research: reliable (large) effects and reliable…

The nature of teaching and learning has evolved over the years, especially as technology has evolved. Innovative application of educational analytics has gained momentum. Indeed, predictive analytics have become increasingly salient in education. Considering the prevalence of learner-system interaction data and the potential value of such data, it…

Research in the UK is increasingly regulated by ethics review committees (RECs) which require researchers to seek ethics approval before commencing research. These RECs routinely expect researchers to anonymise data as part of standard ethical research practice. However, the anonymisation of data may sit in tension with participatory approaches to…

The system architecture of big data in massive open online courses (BD-MOOCs System Architecture) is composed of six components. The first component was comprised of big data tools and technologies such as Hadoop, YARN, HDFS, Spark, Hive, Sqoop, and Flume. The second component was educational data science, which is composed of the following four…

Video has become a widespread tool for capturing naturalistic behavioral data. While mixed methods show great potential in understanding the active nature of children's interaction, only a few studies have developed mixed methods for video-based interaction research. This paper presents a mixed methods embodied interaction model appropriate for…

Student participation in summer programming can be an effective way to address students' academic and developmental needs. When well implemented and well attended, summer enrichment programs, academic programs, and employment programs have demonstrated positive outcomes for youth in areas related to program content, including academic achievement…

As federal funding for summer learning as a pandemic recovery strategy phases out, state governments face decisions about their future role in supporting students' access to quality summer learning opportunities. This brief is based on the full report, "How States Are Expanding Quality Summer Learning Opportunities," and summarizes…

Government agencies collect vast amounts of administrative data in their day-to-day activities, primarily for program operations. But the information is less often used as a research tool or fully harnessed for its evidence-building potential. This brief is the fourth in a series of publications from MDRC about the Temporary Assistance for Needy…

Ethnoracial identity refers to the racial and ethnic categories that people use to classify themselves and others. How it is measured in surveys has implications for understanding inequalities. Yet how people self-identify may not conform to the categories standardized survey questions use to measure ethnicity and race, leading to potential…

Household expenditure data is at the core of efforts to measure living standards, inequality and financial protection against illness. Currently it is mainly derived from recall-based surveys that are time consuming and prone to measurement errors. Diaries are often used as an alternative approach, however this results in fatigue and low…

The prediction of student performance and the analysis of students' learning behaviour play an important role in enhancing online courses. By analysing a massive amount of clickstream data that captures student behaviour, educators can gain valuable insights into the factors that influence students' academic outcomes and identify areas of…

The purpose of the Faculty, Academic Careers and Environments (FACE) project is to understand who faculty are, what their academic careers look like, and how the environments in which they work shape their ability to thrive as instructors, researchers and public scholars in the community. The goal of the project is to examine and pilot test how…

Undergraduate economics programs prepare students for future careers by developing competency working with data, or "data literacy." Our research examined the data literacy components of undergraduate economics programs at R1 and R2 universities in the United States (N = 190). We developed a protocol with core data skills and coded…