

More recently, services like ’s Mechanical Turk (MTurk) and the Digital Laboratory for the Social Sciences (DLABSS) provide low-cost or free survey respondents, rendering this rich data source and research methodology widely accessible.

Survey research has subsequently improved through innovations like the Computer-Assisted Telephone Interview which enabled researchers to automatically survey random samples of households, and later, online survey software allowing researchers to conduct more advanced randomization and to implement advanced survey flow. The most significant advances, rather than merely answering existing questions, open new lines of inquiry never before conceived.Īmong the most significant advances in political science was the advent of survey research, which allowed researchers to shift from considering only aggregations of actors to rigorously interrogating how samples of individuals conceive of their political contexts and how those notions affect their behaviors. Bigger and more advanced telescopes engender new theories of the universe gene editing technologies prompt the development of hardier, more nutritious fruits and vegetables powerful computational systems facilitate ingesting huge quantities of data, synthesizing information in new ways to understand human interactions at scale. New innovations in research methodology historically precede bursts in research productivity.

1 New research methods open new questions
