Technological innovations in the 21st century have enabled researchers to collect and process data about human behavior at an unprecedented scale, but are social scientists keeping up?

In his book, "Bit by Bit: Social Research in the Digital Age" (Princeton University Press), Matthew Salganik, professor of sociology at Princeton University, discusses how new data opportunities are shaping modern social science. But the book is not just a discussion of a changing field -- it is also a practical guide for teaching modern computational methods for collecting and analyzing observational and experimental data.

Designed to appeal to social scientists with an interest in modern techniques, and data scientists with no social science background, elements of the book are already being used at some colleges to teach students how to make the most of big data.

I think the biggest change that is still to come is that much of the tracking and experimentation that we associate with online behavior will increasingly apply to our offline behavior. That is, right now, many researchers are aware that all our behavior online is tracked and subject to experimentation.  -Matthew Salganik

Read the full article by Lindsay McKenzie about data and social science source from Inside Higher Ed