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Apple Or Android? What Your Choice Of Operating System Says About You

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This post previously appeared on CREST's Blog in December 2016. Your mobile phone provides all kinds of useful data about what you do, and where. But does even the choice of handset say something about you? Heather Shaw and CREST Associate David Ellis tell us more. Digital traces can provide scientists and law-enforcement agencies with a range of information about groups and individuals. In particular, smartphones can log communications (e.g., calls and messages) and behaviour from multiple internal sensors (e.g., movement and location). For example, patterns of smartphone usage can be indicative of a person’s sleep-wake activity. Location information, on the other hand, is already used to provide alibis, and can accurately predict where a person works and lives. In a very short space of time, the smartphone has become a mini version of ourselves. This is probably why people become increasingly anxious if someone else attempts to use their smartphone! We found that A...
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When Comfort Replaces Curiosity

There will come a point where a survey can only take you so far. This is especially true when it contains moderation or mediation models. These problems are serious yet are routinely ignored and remain widespread. It's one of those classic cases where the statistical machinery is more powerful than the data it is being applied to. The models answer questions that a single survey will never be equipped to ask. None of this means surveys are useless, but it does mean we should be much more honest about what they can and cannot tell us. What makes this more interesting is that researchers often seem more content to try to drag more out of a survey or psychometric instrument, rather than switch up their methods.  I remain struck by how rarely researchers move beyond their comfort zone, either methodologically or by stepping away from their home discipline. When this happens, it is rarely done with any real conviction. Largely because it involves questioning many methodological and phil...
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Is the narrative CV dead already?

The narrative CV was supposed to be the great equaliser. A chance to move beyond the blunt metrics of h-indices, publication counts, and journal impact factors. A chance for researchers to tell a story. This would help bring to life the messy, non-linear, deeply human realities of a career in academia. On paper, the idea was noble. In practice, I suspect something else has happened entirely. I say suspect, because I am not aware of any research that has assessed whether the narrative CV has improved or hindered progress to date. The Promise When UKRI and other major funders began rolling out narrative CVs, the rationale was compelling. Traditional CVs had long been criticised for rewarding a narrow definition of academic success: more papers, bigger grants, higher-ranked journals. This format systematically disadvantaged early career researchers, those who had taken career breaks, researchers working in applied or interdisciplinary fields, and anyone whose contributions didn't fit ...
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