Back in October 2024, the Methods lab shared a preprint of a study by Methods Lab member and data scientist, Roland Toth, and former research fellow, Douglas Parry, exploring how to isolate meaningful measures of smartphone use from Android event log data. We’re now pleased to announce that this work has been peer-reviewed and published in the journal Computational Communication Research.
The article titled “Extracting Meaningful Measures of Smartphone Usage from Android Event Log Data: A Methodological Primer” outlines a practical and reproducible step-by-step guide for deriving objective indicators of human usage from raw mobile data, offering valuable insights for research in social science and related disciplines. It details the extraction of key usage metrics through written explanations, visual aids, and pseudo-code. The paper is a vital resource for researchers seeking to understand patterns of mobile phone engagement and its implications in today’s rapidly evolving digital environment.