Consortium for the Advancement of Research Methods & Analysis
2025-2026 Webcast Lecture Series
How to Engineer Technologies to Ensure the Validity of Research Using Them
Dr. Richard Landers
Friday, September 5 | Noon – 1:15 PM EDT
Abstract
As behavioral scientists studying organizations and their members increasing integrate technology into their research, they are also increasingly conducting interdisciplinary research without realizing it and with limited expertise in the technology domain they are borrowing from. This has created an epidemic of poorly designed, poorly developed, and poorly understood technologies in organizational research studies. The resulting shortcomings, rather than minor methodological concerns, often threaten the fundamental validity and generalizability of those studies. In this talk, we’ll tackle this problem by exploring how and why the assumptions of behavioral organizational science and technology domains differ. Next, given this foundation, we’ll discuss how organizational researchers can build better technologies through modern engineering practices, select better technologies for inclusion in their research, and better work with technology teams in support of their research goals.
Dr. Richard Landers
Biography
Richard N. Landers, Ph.D., is the John P. Campbell Distinguished Professor of Industrial-Organizational Psychology at the University of Minnesota and Principal Investigator of TNTLAB (Testing New Technologies in Learning, Assessment and Behavior). His academic research concerns the use of innovative technologies like artificial intelligence, games, and gamification to improve psychometric assessment, employee selection, adult learning, and research methods. He is a Fellow of the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology (SIOP), American Psychological Association, and Association for Psychological Science, as well as President-Elect (2025-2026) of SIOP. His work appears primarily in psychology and interdisciplinary human-computer interaction journals, and he is the incoming editor of Technology, Mind, and Behavior (2025 IF 3.2), an interdisciplinary gold open access journal published by the American Psychological Association at the intersection of psychology and computer science. He is author of two textbooks, has developed two edited scholarly volumes, and has been featured in the popular press, including Forbes, Business Insider, and Popular Science. Finally, he regularly consults as president of Landers Workforce Science LLC (https://landers.tech), primarily by auditing or advising on employee hiring systems incorporating artificial intelligence and machine learning.
