Within & Between

There are so many ways to do science. One of them is to analyze data that you didn’t collect! In this episode, Jess and Sara talk about how to go about science-ing with secondary data: Where to find data, coming up with research questions, and how to write a grant when you’re planning on using secondary data. Finally, we talk about how to do open science when you’re working with data that’s alread...

Understanding whether a conclusion in a paper you read or an experiment you run is a valid one is, well, let’s just say pretty important, and more than a little confusing. In this episode, we talk through the Big Four Validities (™):  Internal, External, Statistical Conclusion, and Construct Validity.  It may sound similar, but we promise this is more fun than your last research methods lecture! ...

Sometimes grad students or people who are advising them will ask us if they should take extra statistics classes. Most programs require a few, and so they wonder what the benefit might be for spending the time, energy, and effort to learn even more statistical methods. In this episode Jess and Sara will describe what we think the benefits are of those classes, and what classes we think people shou...

Job Talks, they’re different from conference talks! Here, Jess and Sara talk about what we think is the most successful structure for a job talk; what to include and how long to spend in each area. We describe the purpose of this talk, and what you should think about when writing one. We provide some of our favorite tips for getting the talk ready to present. Hint: practice, practice, practice! Em...

One question Jess and Sara get a lot is whether doing a postdoc is a good idea. Here, we talk about what a postdoc is, how long it lasts, and what kinds of jobs a postdoc can take on. We also describe what we see as the advantages and disadvantages of the position. We talk a bit about our past times as post docs, and what kinds of things you can do when you are there, and what kinds of grants are...

Well 2025 was a year with lots of uncertainty. Jess and Sara talk about how the funding landscape has changed for us, how it has changed our work, and how we are handling it (hint: it’s not great!). We go through ideas of how to pivot your work when there may not be new funding, and describe kinds of projects you can do with minimal outside funding. We expect that academia is going to be a bit dif...

No, you’re not having deja vu. It’s a different kind of two part episode, one that is two and a half years in the making. Sara has moved to a new institution! And just to one up Jess, she has also moved to a new country! Listen to hear her talk about what it’s like to move institutions as a (ahem) senior professor. What kinds of things do you have to think about across research, teaching, and serv...

It’s no mystery that research papers are essential for academic work. What IS a mystery is how to figure out who should be an author on those academic papers and how to have conversions about it. In this episode, Jess and Sara go over some authorship roles, guidelines and rules that govern authorship in the field, and talk about different ideas of determining order of authorship. This episode was...

In this episode, Jess and Sara reckon with what the preregistration revolution means in developmental science. We first visited preregistration and registered reports in Season 3. Since then, we’ve been a part of many preregistrations and registered reports, and have reviewed and handled them as editors. Through that process, we’ve noticed that questions often come up about whether something is re...

What can we say about the often used and often confused statistical approach that is moderation? Quite a lot actually. In this episode Jess and Sara introduce the basics of moderation (aka statistical interactions) using absolutely no math (or very nearly absolutely no math). Listen to get a primer on the kinds of questions you can ask with moderation, and to get answers to common moderation quest...

Related to this podcast's interests in data sharing, this week Jess and Sara talk about common data elements initiatives. These are movements that are hoping to get all of the researchers in the same field or subfield to agree to a given set of assessments, measures, procedures, and/or reporting metrics (Think: Everyone who measures mother’s education would ask the same stem question with the...

Measuring change is our first ever LIVE EPISODE! Recorded at the Association for Psychological Science conference with a live conference audience! Over here in the developmental sciences, we are often trying to measure or predict how much people grow and change over time. To do that, we’ll sometimes measure a skill or ability twice (for kids, maybe that’s once near the beginning of the school year...

Mediation models! At their core, mediation models explore the relations among three variables: A predictor, an outcome, and a secret third thing they call a Mediator. You’ve probably seen mediation models out there in the published literature, with folks testing paths, seeing if a relation is still there if a mediator is involved, or testing for an “indirect effect”. Jess and Sara talk about all o...

In the second part of our series on academic conferences, Jess and Sara talk through the unique vocabulary of conferences (the word plenary, by the way, means “fully attended by all entitled to be present”), and walk through a conference day. Conferences are set up for those of us who love being around big groups of people, so we also talk about how those who are more introverted or shy can get th...

One of the ways the research machine operates is through research conferences. Scientists present new work, hear about others’ work, and (maybe most importantly) network with one another. In the first of a two-part episode about conferencing, Jess and Sara talk about what research conferences are and why you might want to go. We talk through how we choose which conferences to attend, how to plan y...

If a scientist learns something new about the world but doesn’t tell anyone, have they really learned something new? Telling people is precisely the point of a dissemination plan or broader impact statement that the Institute of Education Sciences or National Science Foundation asks for as part of their research grant applications. Federal agencies want you to share what you learn with the world....

Developing research questions is one of the most challenging aspects of the research process. This one little statement reflects so much about the rest of your project or paper. Jess and Sara reflect on how they develop their own research questions, the challenges with research questions and secondary data, and how they help teach students to develop research questions in their own work. Spoiler a...

We love data sharing around here, and something exciting happened In January 2023: The NIH put into effect a brand new Data Management and Data Sharing Policy. Any grant submitted to the NIH must follow this new Policy, and each grant submitted will include a Data Management and Sharing Plan describing how the research team will comply with that policy. Have a listen as Jess and Sara describe the...

Since we last talked, Jess has moved institutions! In this episode, Jess and Sara discuss the ins and outs of her recent move and why she made the decision to go. We describe how a mid-career academic move is different from an early career one, the timeline of the hiring process when you do (and don’t) have a promotion as part of the offer, and some of the difficult nuts and bolts of moving. Learn...

In most faculty jobs, the department or college asks you to stop and document what you’ve been up to for the past year. In this episode, Jess and Sara talk about the institution’s goals for this annual review. We compare notes on what the evaluation packet looks like for our two programs, and we find that they are… quite different. Finally, Sara has the inside scoop on what happens after you turn...

In this episode, Jess and Sara talk about managing all the manuscripts that they are working on. We talk about whether and how we keep track of those papers that are nearly done, partly done, or just an idea, and how that changes when you are a first author vs. a coauthor. We also talk about how we mentor students through the writing process, from idea through to finished draft. We’ll cover broad...

In this episode, Jess and Sara finally (Finally!) tackle the basic premise of behavior genetics. We talk about what kinds of research questions you can ask with genetically sensitive designs, describe what heritability is and what it’s not, and discuss just how it’s possible that scientists can use data from twin pairs to understand how much of the variance in some skill or behavior is due to gene...

If you’ve ever had to deal with missing data, you’ve probably wished you could avoid it completely in the future. So why on earth would anyone design a study where data are missing on purpose? When you set up a project, there are actually several advantages to selecting a subset of people to skip assessments, items, or waves on purpose. Jess and Sara describe those designs here, and just what the...

Why do you write a grant? To get money to do some sort of project of course! But how do you figure out how much money you need? Through a grant budget! But what goes into a grant budget? All kinds of things that you might expect (e.g., cost of the materials you need) and some things that you maybe don’t (e.g., Indirect costs). How can I find out what those budget-y things are and what they mean? Y...

Preregistration is writing down your idea for how you plan to collect and analyze your data _before_ you actually start collecting or analyzing it. In this episode, Jess and Sara talk about the many benefits of preregistration, the differences between preregistration and registered reports, describe their experiences with it, discuss some resources, and (hopefully) put to rest some fears about the...