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Case Study

Breaking New Ground in the Social Sciences

About the Research

Breaking New Ground in the Social Sciences with a Custom R-Shiny Data Analysis and Visualization App

Claudia Haase is an associate professor of human development and social policy in the School of Education and Social Policy, and she studies pathways towards happy, healthy, and meaningful development across the life span with a focus on emotions in individuals, couples, parents and children, and friends.

Research Challenge

Haase and her team—The Life-Span Development Laboratory—use multiple methods of data collection—autonomic physiology recordings, behavioral observations, subjective emotional experience assessments, linguistic analyses, and neuroimaging—so there are many data streams for them to analyze and visualize. They are particularly interested in how people “click” and link up with each other, for example, as their heart rates rise and fall together or they synchronize their smiles.

They specifically wanted to create a tool that would allow them to analyze and visualize this linkage data for publications and live at conferences and talks. The lab didn’t have the coding background to create this tool, so they reached out to Northwestern IT’s Research Computing and Data Services (RCDS) team.

Solution

Through initial intake conversations, it was determined that the lab needed the ability to customize analysis and visualizations of their data, so RCDS data analysis and visualization experts suggested an interactive online application that uses R-Shiny. Developing the application with R-Shiny ensured that the research team could validate the analysis code, make future updates if needed, and share it with the scientific community.

RCDS created an interactive tool to analyze and visualize how people’s physiology, behavior, or emotional experiences link up as they are talking about things they enjoy doing together or a disagreement in their relationship. The tool—Linkage Data Explorer (LinkEx)—provides a code-free interface for researchers to upload and analyze data to determine linkages between pairs of participants, generate interactive figures, customize and download static figures, and analyze and download the results for a larger dataset with many pairs of participants in one batch.

The RCDS team is so brilliant and was immediately able to understand what we were trying to accomplish. They are not only amazing scientists but also lovely collaborators. The success of a project depends so much on who you are working with, and RCDS has made a huge difference.”

Claudia Haase
Associate Professor of Human Development and Social Policy
School of Education and Social Policy

Impact

LinkEx is available to any researchers to use for their own work where they need to investigate relationships between two data streams. It has allowed the lab to deepen and develop collaboration with others, which has enabled them to break new scientific ground that is relevant to both theory and theory development. Tabea Meier, a senior researcher at the University of Zurich in Switzerland, is using LinkEx, for example, to gain new insights into how socioeconomic status can become embodied and shape physiological connections in real time. The collaboration with RCDS to develop this tool has led to presentations at leading conferences and universities, manuscripts for peer review, and successful grant applications.

The tool has also allowed undergraduate students in the lab to develop award-winning research projects. One of them is Angela Zhong, who received the Lindsay Chase-Lansdale Undergraduate Summer Research Grant for Children and Families for her work on physiological linkage and empathic accuracy in caregiver-youth dyads. Zhong also recently won the Fletcher Undergraduate Research Grant prize, an award for the most outstanding 2024 summer projects for her work with LinkEx.

According to Haase, LinkEx would not exist without RCDS. Even if the lab had the resources to hire a data visualization consultant instead of partnering with RCDS, Haase believes they wouldn’t have been able to find the level of collaboration that RCDS provided.

Additional Details