Within & Between
60 episodes - English - Latest episode: 3 months ago -A podcast about the methods and metascience of developmental science, cohosted by Jessica Logan @jarlogan and Sara Hart @saraannhart. We talk about developmental sciencing, including data collection, data analysis, research methods, and open science, as well as life in academia. Think about it like a lab meeting where you don’t have to do the readings and never have to present.
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Episodes
S4E12: Authorship
January 17, 2024 11:00 - 1 hour - 59.9 MBIt’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 recorded live at the Emerging Perspectives on Early STEM Learning, Development, and Education Wo...
S4E11: Revisiting Preregistration and Registered Reports
December 06, 2023 19:29 - 44 minutes - 53.2 MBIn 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 really a preregistration and whether some studies or analyses can or should be preregistered. W...
S4E10: Moderation
August 23, 2023 10:00 - 59 minutes - 70.1 MBWhat 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 questions like: Why is my interaction negative if my main effect is positive? Can I interpret the ma...
S4E9: Common Data Elements? What are those?
August 17, 2023 01:58 - 58 minutes - 69.3 MBRelated 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 same eight category responses, which would be coded and reported in the same way). We’ll talk about...
S4E8: LIVE EPISODE! So you measured something twice, now what?
July 05, 2023 10:00 - 48 minutes - 41.1 MBMeasuring 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 and once at the end of the school year). In this episode, Jess and Sara talk about options for ...
S4E7: Mediation
May 31, 2023 10:00 - 53 minutes - 59.8 MBMediation 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 of this in this episode. What is mediation, what kinds of questions can you ask with it, and why ...
S4E6: The hidden curriculum at academic conferences (part 2)
May 10, 2023 10:00 - 43 minutes - 47.5 MBIn 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 the most out of the experience. Happy conferencing! Connect with the podcast on twitter @within_b...
S4E5: The hidden curriculum at academic conferences (part 1)
May 03, 2023 10:00 - 51 minutes - 59.3 MBOne 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 your travel, and the importance of a comfortable pair of shoes. Connect with the podcast on twi...
S4E4: Broader Impacts and Dissemination Plans
March 29, 2023 10:00 - 48 minutes - 56.9 MBIf 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. You might be used to thinking about this as publishing scientific papers or presenting your wor...
S4E3: Developing Research Questions
March 01, 2023 11:00 - 44 minutes - 48.4 MBDeveloping 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 alert: Part of the answer is to read. A lot. And then read more. Connect with the podcast on twi...
S4E2: Fun with NIH’s Data Management and Sharing Policy
February 22, 2023 11:00 - 1 hour - 76.6 MBWe 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 new Policy, and walk you through the parts of the Plan, with honestly a bit more enthusiasm than...
S4E1: Moving is Disruptive
February 15, 2023 11:00 - 55 minutes - 59.2 MBSince 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. Learning a new culture, new systems, and getting new logins. And did you know they delete your email ...
S3E11: The Annual Review
January 19, 2022 11:00 - 49 minutes - 61.3 MBIn 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 the annual review packet at her institution, and folks it is fascinating. Have a listen as yo...
S2E10: Managing the Paper Queue
December 15, 2021 11:00 - 57 minutes - 82.9 MBIn 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 concepts and specific tools of the trade. Mentioned in this article: National Center for Facul...
S3E9: What is Heritability Anyway?
December 01, 2021 13:00 - 44 minutes - 71.9 MBIn 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 genes and how much is attributable to the environment. A lot of that estimate depends on just how mu...
3E8: Planned Missing Data - This Cell Intentionally Left Blank.
November 24, 2021 13:00 - 54 minutes - 61.5 MBIf 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 advantages are, as well as fun future directions for one specific subtype of these designs: The ...
S3E8: Planned Missing Data - This Cell Intentionally Left Blank.
November 24, 2021 13:00 - 54 minutes - 61.5 MBIf 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 advantages are, as well as fun future directions for one specific subtype of these designs: The ...
S3E7: Parts of a Grant Budget
November 17, 2021 11:00 - 1 hour - 75.8 MBWhy 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? You’re in luck, friend. That’s what Jess and Sara talk about for this whole episode! But Jess, wh...
S3E6: Preregistrations
October 13, 2021 10:00 - 1 hour - 72.5 MBPreregistration 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 practice that you might have. Some resources we mention in this episode: Sara’s blog post on ...
S3E5: Preregistrations
October 13, 2021 10:00 - 1 hour - 72.5 MBPreregistration 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 practice that you might have. Some resources we mention in this episode: Sara’s blog post on ...
S3E5: Trajectories have variance too!
September 29, 2021 10:00 - 41 minutes - 44.1 MBTrajectory of heritability to the heritability of trajectories? Measuring growth in skills and abilities over time is practically (maybe literally!) synonymous with developmental science. In this episode, Jess and Sara talk about how static measurements of a skill can have different variance, and different predictors, from growth in that skill. After a general discussion, we dive into how that plays into estimates of heritability, and the difference between the trajectory of heritability an...
S3E4: You are the search committee
September 22, 2021 10:00 - 1 hour - 77.3 MBIn this episode, Jess and Sara talk about what it’s like to serve on an academic search committee. To those of you who are about to serve on a committee (maybe for the first time), we will take you through the whole process from writing the call to making the offer. Or those of you on the market this year, peek behind the curtain. Every search is different! Things happen very differently from university to university, and even from search to search. We want this overview to give you, the se...
S3E3: All about that LDBase
August 18, 2021 10:00 - 52 minutes - 39.6 MBIn this episode, Jess asks Sara to talk about LDBase, the data repository she has been building designed specifically to hold developmental science data. We discuss what LDbase is, what motivated her and her colleagues to start building it, what makes it unique, and how it works. Sara even describes several excellent resources you can find on the website that make data sharing easier. Go see it for yourself at www.LDBase.org All about integrative data analysis: Curran, P. J., & Hussong, A....
S3E2: What’s up with Els*vier?
August 11, 2021 22:00 - 52 minutes - 60.2 MBYou may have noticed that the cycle of academic publishing is pretty broken. Scientists give their research papers to academic journals for free, then the journal puts that work behind a paywall. Sometimes institutions will pay for a package of subscriptions to these journals, often costing millions of dollars. Jess and Sara talk about this cycle, and how institutions, journals, and individuals have started to push back against it. On ArXiv: https://xkcd.com/2085/ About UC’s exit from that...
S3E1: Methodologists? What are those?
August 04, 2021 10:00 - 1 hour - 62.7 MBIn this episode Jess and Sara talk about the role of methodologist in developmental science, and how it’s different from a statistician. A methodologist is a content expert and a collaborator like any other, and we do our best work when we’re involved right from the initial planning stages of a project. Why? Because nearly every decision made in a research project can have implications for statistical conclusions, and methodologists are the collaborators who keep this in mind. Think you migh...
Season ALMOST 3 : Burnout.
June 09, 2021 10:00 - 48 minutes - 45.1 MBWell the spring 2021 semester is over, and - what is this feeling? We’re a little (a lot) overwhelmed. Jess and Sara describe their experiences, and theorize a bit about why it might be particularly bad right now. Is the pandemic over here in the US? What does that mean for our jobs? That feeling of one day more can sometimes be too much. We end by suggesting, maybe, we all need a break, and to give ourselves, and our colleagues, some grace. Ed Yong’s article about the “end” of the pandemic...
S2E14: Data Management Episode 2
March 24, 2021 10:00 - 1 hour - 72.5 MBThe saga continues. In this episode we talk about the data management steps you’ll need to consider after you’ve collected your data. We talk a lot about data entry, including the science of how to do it well. We also discuss data merging, data cleaning, and the concept of “release” datasets. Finally, because it seems no episode is complete without Sara discovering something to be shocked about regarding Jess’s approach to science, we talk about the importance of backing up your data. Resou...
E2E13: Data management Episode I.
March 03, 2021 11:00 - 1 hour - 68.1 MBYou might think “data management” is just getting data ready to share, but it’s so much more. In this episode, Jess and Sara talk about the expanded universe of data management. This is the first of a two part series, and focuses on some of the things you can do to help ensure you have good quality data before you even talk to a single participant. We talk about lots of fun data management tips and tricks, from creating research protocols, assigning IDs, creating variable names, variable cod...
S2E13: Data management Episode I.
March 03, 2021 11:00 - 1 hour - 68.1 MBYou might think “data management” is just getting data ready to share, but it’s so much more. In this episode, Jess and Sara talk about the expanded universe of data management. This is the first of a two part series, and focuses on some of the things you can do to help ensure you have good quality data before you even talk to a single participant. We talk about lots of fun data management tips and tricks, from creating research protocols, assigning IDs, creating variable names, variable cod...
E2E12: Nurture might be Nature
February 24, 2021 11:00 - 1 hour - 63.6 MBTurnabout is fair play in this episode as now Sara describes her new paper! Some developmental science research is focused on how the home environment is correlated (or co-occurs with) children’s skills, behaviors, or abilities. Sara explains that these correlations are also influenced by the shared genes between parents and their children, and that the genetic correlation may be inflating the true environmental correlation that scientists are seeking to measure. In this episode, she describ...
S2E12: Nurture might be Nature
February 24, 2021 11:00 - 1 hour - 63.6 MBTurnabout is fair play in this episode as now Sara describes her new paper! Some developmental science research is focused on how the home environment is correlated (or co-occurs with) children’s skills, behaviors, or abilities. Sara explains that these correlations are also influenced by the shared genes between parents and their children, and that the genetic correlation may be inflating the true environmental correlation that scientists are seeking to measure. In this episode, she describ...
S2E11: Factor Scores
February 10, 2021 11:00 - 48 minutes - 48.1 MBNew Paper Alert! Jess and her colleagues have a paper in review about a particular statistical method that we see a lot in developmental science. Have you ever run a confirmatory factor analysis and then saved (or extracted) the factor scores, turning them into observed scores for use in another analysis? If you have more than one latent factor, the default method for extracting factor scores can have some unintended consequences on the correlations between those newly created observed varia...
S2E10: Within and Between Bites
February 03, 2021 11:00 - 30 minutes - 27.9 MBTo celebrate hitting our 10,000 listens benchmark, Jess and Sara spend episode 10 discussing two listener questions. First, we talk about the decision to change or not to change your last name when you get married. It’s something many developmental scientists struggle with, and we talk about how (even though it feels unique) it’s not terribly different from other professions. Second, we discuss that overwhelming feeling you sometimes get when you’re trying to manage your research pipeline, a...
S2E9: P-P-P-Pre-Prints
January 27, 2021 11:00 - 54 minutes - 70.2 MBAre you open-science curious? Ready to turn and face the strange ch-ch-changes happening in our field? Preprints are one of the most accessible steps in learning about, and might we even suggest embracing open science. To post a preprint, you put a digital copy of a completed paper online, somewhere others can read it. In this episode, we discuss the advantages of preprints, different ways to post them, and address some of the potential barriers and common fears we hear from other scholars ...
S2E8: Stop, collaborate, and listen
January 20, 2021 11:00 - 1 hour - 73.3 MBJess and Sara are both advocates for interdisciplinary science, and interdisciplinary science means collaborations! On this episode, we talk about why we love interdisciplinary science and why some departments would prefer a more focused line of research. We also talk about the life cycle of collaborations, how we start them, maintain them, and let them go. Links from this episode: The Hidden Curriculum book Sara mentioned: A Field Guide to Grad School The book Jess mentioned: Structure o...
S2E7: Goal setting
January 06, 2021 11:00 - 1 hour - 64.2 MBNew year, new goals! Goal setting helps keep you on task, helps you work towards bigger goals, and can help you feel more successful. But many of us really struggle with it (cough cough Jess cough cough). Sara walks us through the goal setting system she uses, how it differs by career stage. We talk about specifics including what to include in your long term goals (hint, only the things you can control), and how to set up a semester spreadsheet. In this episode: An example of Dr. Esther Li...
S2E6: A few of our favorite things
December 23, 2020 11:00 - 57 minutes - 66.2 MBFor the end of 2020, we asked our listeners to name a few of their favorite things - favorite things about being a developmental scientist, that is. Our unscientific analysis of themes includes: Developmental scientists can translate our work into other fields, it’s very applicable to our parent friends, that the methods we use are creative and complex, and that working with kids is a blast (they say the darndest things). Jess and Sara discuss the submissions we received, and talk about a fe...
S205: Lab management and structure
December 16, 2020 11:00 - 1 hour - 69.5 MBWhat does it mean to have a lab, and who is part of it? In this episode, Jess and Sara describe their experiences with different lab setups and structures, and how they manage their meetings with students, projects, and collaborators. We discover that Sara has been using a lab management and productivity tool secretly for years! Our systems for working with our labs, projects, and students are always changing, and Sara might be a bit too addicted with trying to find the best combination. Li...
S204: Inter-Rater Reliability
December 09, 2020 11:00 - 47 minutes - 51.9 MBAs the semester draws to a close, Jess wakes up in the middle of the night concerned not with completing her grading, but with measuring inter-rater reliability for coding schemes. Reliability can refer to the agreement among raters, or agreement among items. There’s a lot of online discourse right now around reliability, but most of it is focused around the former: agreement among items. Over here in the field of developmental science, we’re often coding human behavior through observations,...
S204: Inter-rater reliability
December 09, 2020 11:00 - 47 minutes - 51.9 MBAs the semester draws to a close, Jess wakes up in the middle of the night concerned not with completing her grading, but with measuring inter-rater reliability for coding schemes. Reliability can refer to the agreement among raters, or agreement among items. There’s a lot of online discourse right now around reliability, but most of it is focused around the former: agreement among items. Over here in the field of developmental science, we’re often coding human behavior through observations,...
S303: Academic online professional presence
December 02, 2020 11:00 - 52 minutes - 56.3 MBIt is a truth universally acknowledged that an academic in 2020 must be in want of an online presence. Jess and Sara describe why you need to be online, and their experiences with social media, professional networks, and creating websites (and that twitch isn’t just what happens to Jess’s eye after 6 straight hours on zoom calls). The episode ends with our top three suggestions for how to get involved online. Links from this episode: Jess’ tumblr blog Introductory tutorial on how to use t...
S203: Academic online professional presence
December 02, 2020 11:00 - 52 minutes - 56.3 MBIt is a truth universally acknowledged that an academic in 2020 must be in want of an online presence. Jess and Sara describe why you need to be online, and their experiences with social media, professional networks, and creating websites (and that twitch isn’t just what happens to Jess’s eye after 6 straight hours on zoom calls). The episode ends with our top three suggestions for how to get involved online. Links from this episode: Jess’ tumblr blog Introductory tutorial on how to use t...
S202: Becoming a parent in academia
November 25, 2020 11:00 - 57 minutes - 60.3 MBTo be or not to be (a parent!) that is the question. One of our listeners reached out with a question about timing of starting a family during an academic career. Jess and Sara both describe their respective experiences with having children, how quickly they got back to work, and the pros and cons of the academic work-life balance. Resources: In case you don’t know what yeet means either. Thanks to listener Emily Bibby for the episode idea! Connect with the podcast on twitter @within_betw...
S201: Catching up from season 1
November 18, 2020 11:00 - 1 hour - 64.1 MBIn which we welcome you back to a new season of the podcast. Jess and Sara catch up on pandemic work and life. We describe the subtle and sometimes not so subtle feeling of being underwater that seems to accompany this particular time, describe how our online teaching is going, and discuss the different ways we’re translating and incorporating anti-racism into our courses. Resources: Many analyst paper Jess mentioned. Paper Sara mentioned about how when you measure something can change your...
Season 2 Teaser
November 12, 2020 15:36 - 1 minute - 1.57 MBDid you miss us? Just a small teaser of Season 2! First full episode is out November 18!!
Episode 12: Why are we here? And let it go?
September 02, 2020 10:00 - 1 hour - 70.7 MBJess and Sara get a bit meta this week (some things never change), and discuss why academia is even a job. We walk through a fun and nerdy thought experiment: Is the Curriculum Vita a list of manifest variable indicators of some sort of latent variable of academia? We discuss when and how we decide to leave a project lost in the woods. And think, for the first time in forever, about a project that we had both abandoned and almost forgotten about. Here’s the “Ginther report” Sara talked about...
Episode 11: Perfection, rejection, and impostor syndrome
August 26, 2020 10:00 - 55 minutes - 63.2 MBThere’s a close link between the concepts of Perfection and Impostor Syndrome, perhaps mediated (or moderated?) by experiences of rejection. In this episode, we discuss that link, and personify it as Sara helps Jess try to cope with rejection and encourages her to get some rejected manuscripts back under review*. Connect with the podcast on twitter @within_between, or email us letters about developmental science at [email protected]. More episodes and podcast information at With...
Episode 11: Perfection, Rejection, and Impostor Syndrome
August 26, 2020 10:00 - 55 minutes - 63.2 MBThere’s a close link between the concepts of Perfection and Impostor Syndrome, perhaps mediated (or moderated?) by experiences of rejection. In this episode, we discuss that link, and personify it as Sara helps Jess try to cope with rejection and encourages her to get some rejected manuscripts back under review*. Connect with the podcast on twitter @within_between, or email us letters about developmental science at [email protected]. More episodes and podcast information at With...
Episode 10: Revise and Resubmit
August 19, 2020 10:00 - 52 minutes - 55.3 MBIn this episode we talk about rejections - paper rejections. Jess and Sara describe their emotional and not so emotional reactions to finding out whether a paper has been rejected, offered a revise and resubmit, or accepted. We also discuss how much we change a rejected manuscript before we send it elsewhere, how to craft a revision letter, and the urban legend of papers accepted on the first submission. Resources: The blog post mentioned which discusses a different way to revise and resub...
Episode 10: Revise and resubmit
August 19, 2020 10:00 - 52 minutes - 55.3 MBIn this episode we talk about rejections - paper rejections. Jess and Sara describe their emotional and not so emotional reactions to finding out whether a paper has been rejected, offered a revise and resubmit, or accepted. We also discuss how much we change a rejected manuscript before we send it elsewhere, how to craft a revision letter, and the urban legend of papers accepted on the first submission. Resources: The blog post mentioned which discusses a different way to revise and resub...