The Consortium for the Advancement of Research Methods and Analysis (CARMA) held a webcast lecture featuring speakers Dr. Lisa Schurer Lambert, associate professor from Georgia State University, and Dr. Daniel Beal, associate professor from Virginia Tech, on January 26.

Lambert kicked off the program discussing, “Storytelling through Statistics.” She explained writers are often encouraged to develop the story line of their manuscripts to challenge assumed knowledge by shifting or creating consensus around knowledge in a domain, complete with a compelling “hook” to capture readers’ attention. A great deal of attention is typically devoted to the verbal story of a manuscript, but authors often neglect to craft the statistical story in their Methods and Results sections. She identified four principles for writing effective Methods and Results, and illustrated each principle with both violations and with positive examples of adherence to the principles. She further explained if one follows these four principles, their statistical story will improve which will increase the likelihood they publish their story, enter their chosen academic conversation and contribute their part to the body of knowledge.

Beal presented, “Experience Sampling Methods.” Experience sampling methods (ESMs) attempt to capture a representative sample of an individual's experiences in their natural environment. Since their inception over 40 years ago, many variations of ESMs have been developed, given new names and fitted to a wide variety of purposes. Beal described the goal of his lecture was to describe some of the most prominent forms of these methods and the contexts in which they are most useful. Rather than providing a silver bullet method for each occasion, one might instead think of these methods as a suite of offerings to be used in tandem to help uncover important insights about temporal patterns and knowledge regarding how constructs emerge at various time points. Beal discussed how these methods link together, and pointed out their advantages, challenges, and shortcomings. Finally, he discussed ways in which all of these methods can inform higher levels of analysis.

If you missed the live lecture, our entire webcast series is available online and we would encourage you to become a CARMA website user. Your affiliation with the University of Nebraska-Lincoln provides this access to you for no charge simply by signing up: https://carma.azurewebsites.net/account/register. Once a member, you will have free access to over 100 past webcasts on everything from structural equation modeling, social network analysis, item response theory, and many other research methods. Published: March 13, 2018