President Barack Obama has vowed to keep pushing for new gun control measures and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said the failed gun vote in the Senate was “just the beginning.” However, the latest Reason-Rupe national poll finds just 33 percent of Americans feel the “Senate should debate and vote [...] Read more »
Radiovoter: The ‘Like’ Button That Came Before Facebook
Talking back to our broadcast media seems to be an integral part of the early 21st century experience. … It might seem like something that’s just started popping into conversations recently, but the idea is as old as broadcasting itself. In 1934, a New York research engineer named Dr. Nevil Monroe [...] Read more »
The G.O.P.’s Digital Makeover
The Republican Party faces hurdles as it attempts to equal or surpass the Democratic Party’s success in capitalizing on technological innovation to win President Obama a second term. It was only two presidential elections ago, in 2004, that the political classes were talking about Republican domination of data mining and [...] Read more »
Could Google tilt a close election?
Google’s motto is “Don’t be evil.” But what would it mean for democracy if it was? That’s the question psychologist Robert Epstein has been asking in a series of experiments testing the impact of a fictitious search engine — he called it “Kadoodle” — that manipulated search rankings, giving an [...] Read more »
Beyond Smartphones: Envisioning the Next Generation of Data Collection Devices
Mobile data collection has garnered significant attention among survey researchers in the last few years. … Incorporating the devices requires research to determine when and how they can be used with acceptable results (i.e., produce quality data). At the same time we are conducting this research, new devices are being [...] Read more »
You May Not Have Posted It, but Facebook Knows
… In late February, Facebook announced partnerships with four companies that collect lucrative behavioral data, from store loyalty card transactions and customer e-mail lists to divorce and Web browsing records. … Targeted advertising bears important implications for consumers. It could mean seeing advertisements based not just on what they “like” [...] Read more »
Google testing poll questions to improve search results
Quick poll: Do you want to answer questions to improve your Google experience? The Silicon Valley tech giant is testing using poll questions to improve the search results it shows to users. The Times spotted the feature Friday, and Google confirmed it is an experiment the company is conducting. [cont.] [...] Read more »
Social media for social science: The imperfect window
Much of the world, it seems, has been atwitter about social media in recent years. Researchers are no exception. Rather than needing to solicit insight from people with telephone calls during dinner or mailing surveys that largely end up in the trash, social scientists now have readily available tools to [...] Read more »
Nielsen Plans to Expand Ratings From TV to Broadband Views
Consumers don’t just watch TV on television sets, and now, Nielsen is preparing to measure TV-watching beyond the obvious boob-tube. The company has disclosed plans to start measuring consumer views of TV programs that are watched via a broadband connection in the home — a development sure to be praised [...] Read more »
John E. Karlin, Who Led the Way to All-Digit Dialing, Dies at 94
… Mr. Karlin, associated from 1945 until his retirement in 1977 with Bell Labs, headquartered in Murray Hill, N.J., was widely considered the father of human-factors engineering in American industry. A branch of industrial psychology that combines experimentation, engineering and product design, human-factors engineering is concerned with easing the awkward, [...] Read more »