Big Data Recommendations for Industrial–Organizational Psychology

The world is awash in data. Data is being created and stored at ever-increasing rates through a variety of new methods and technologies. Data is accumulating in all sorts of accessible places. Much of that data is of great interest to industrial–organizational (I-O) psychologists, often in ways never anticipated by those who develop technologies and processes that generate and store that data. I-O psychologists also generate data in the course of research and practice in ways that, especially if joined with data originating from other sources, create giant datasets. This abundance of data—variables, measurements, observations, facts—can be used to inform a vast number of issues in research and practice. This is the new “big data” world, and beyond opportunities, this new world also presents challenges and potential hazards.