R. Gordon Rinderknecht

I am an associate behavioral scientist at the RAND Corporation. I was previously a research scientist at the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, and I completed my PhD in sociology at the University of Maryland in 2020.

Research

My research primarily focuses on the experience of social isolation and loneliness in daily life. I am also highly interested in the opportunities and challenges associated with online data collection.

My current projects (1) examine the situational experience of social isolation and loneliness; (2) examine changes in social engagement since the 1960’s via harmonized time-diary data; (3) include developing and implementing new methods for collecting experiential and time-diary data; (4) identify the opportunities and challenges associated with using crowdsourcing platforms (i.e. MTurk, Prolific) for academic research; and I am (5) currently conducting data collection for a longitudinal study of COVID-19’s effects on daily life and wellbeing. (See here for more information.)

Selected Ongoing Projects

R. Gordon Rinderknecht, Daniela Veronica Negraia, Sophie Lohmann, and Emilio Zagheni. “Understanding the Growth of Solitary Leisure in the U.S., 1965–2018.” MPIDR Working Paper. doi: 10.4054/MPIDR-WP-2023-025

R. Gordon Rinderknecht, Long Doan, and Liana Sayer. “The Daily Lives of Crowdsourced U.S. Respondents: A Time-Use Comparison of MTurk, Prolific, and ATUS.” Under Review at Sociological Methodology.

R. Gordon Rinderknecht, Long Doan, and Liana Sayer. “Secondary Activities: Their Proximity to Primary Activities and Their Importance for Understanding Reports of Preparing and Consuming Meals.” Forthcoming at Survey Methods: Insights from the Field .

Selected Publications

Ridhi Kashyap*, R. Gordon Rinderknecht*, et al. 2023. “Digital and Computational Demography.” Pp. 48-86 in Research Handbook of Digital Sociology. doi: 10.31235/osf.io/7bvpt (* indicates equal authorship)

R. Gordon Rinderknecht, Long Doan, and Liana Sayer. 2022. “MyTimeUse: An Online Implementation of the Day-Reconstruction Method.” Journal of Time Use Research: 1-50. doi: 10.32797/jtur-2022-3

R. Gordon Rinderknecht, Long Doan, and Liana Sayer. 2021. “Loneliness Loves Company, Some More Than Others: Tie Strength, Form of Engagement, and Their Relation to Loneliness.” Social Problems: 1-18. doi: 10.1093/socpro/spab049

R. Gordon Rinderknecht. 2019. “Effects of Participant Displeasure on the Social-Psychological Study of Power on Amazon’s Mechanical Turk.” SAGE Open 9: 1-13. doi: 10.1177/2158244019876268

I have also co-authored articles appearing in Socius, Computers in Human Behavior, Social Science & Medicine, LGBT Health, Journal of Family Violence, and Psychology of Sexual Orientation and Gender Diversity.

Software Development

My programming background includes complex data processing and the creation of platforms for experimental and time-use research. My primary focus is the development of mytimeuse.com, an online platform for collecting experiential and time-diary data. (See here for more information.) I developed the platform using JavaScript (w/ Angular 4) and Python (w/ Flask-RESTful and SQLAlchemy).

Last Updated: 10/1/2023