Start Small, not Random: Why does Justifying your Time-Lag Matter?

Repeated measurement designs have been growing in popularity in the fields of Organizational Behavior and Work and Organizational Psychology. This brings up questions regarding the appropriateness of time-lag choices and validity of justification used to make time-lag decisions in the current literature. We start by explaining how time-lag choices are typically made and explain issues associated with these approaches. Next, we provide some insights into how an optimal time-lag decision should be made and the importance of time-sensitive theory building in helping guide these decisions. Finally, we end with some brief suggestions as to how authors can move forward by urging them to explicitly address temporal dynamics in their research, and by advocating for descriptive studies with short time-lags, which are needed to uncover how the changes happen over time.