Big Data

The availability of Big Data is more and more common in many fields including business, computer science, government, social and behavioral sciences, and psychology. Since it is hard to clearly define what Big Data is, we do not impose. The overall aim of this conference is to address methods and applications using Big Data in psychology. a strict definition of Big Data in this conference.

There are three key characteristics that may qualify data as Big Data, namely Volume, Velocity, and Variety. High-volume data refers to the size of the dataset is too large that may lead to problems with storage and analysis. High-velocity data means that the data come at a high rate and/or have to be processed within a short period of time (e.g., real-time and interactive processing). High-variety data are data consisting of many types of structured and unstructured data with a mix of text, pictures, videos, and numbers. Another characteristic for Big Data is the veracity, which indicates the importance of the quality (or truthfulness) of data. Some examples of Big Data that may be relevant for psychology are social media data, health/physiological tracker data, geolocation data, dynamic public records, travel route data, behavioral and genetic data. Papers submitted to this pre-conference symposium may focus on one or more of these features in Big Data.

The topics covered may address (but are not limited to):

• Methodological and statistical issues in collecting, handling, processing, and analyzing Big Data in psychology.
• Applications and illustrations of how Big Data are used to address psychological research questions.
• Psychological interventions making use of Big Data.
• Inference models taking Big Data into account.
• Comparison of Big Data versus ´traditional´ data sources (e.g., self-reports, peer-reports, etc.).
• Combining traditional data sources with Big Data.
• Implications of Big Data for research infrastructures in psychology and related areas.

Publication opportunities
We would like to point conference participants to the Hotspots in Psychology - 2022 Edition. People interested are asked to submit a manuscript to this topical Issue of the Zeitschrift für Psychologie.