Nick Ballou
Early Career Research Fellow at Imperial College London
London, England, United Kingdom
Summary
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Senior🎓
Top SchoolNick Ballou is an early career research fellow and postdoctoral-trained behavioral scientist who studies how video game play affects mental health, combining large-scale digital trace data with intensive longitudinal surveys and experimental designs. With eight years’ experience spanning Oxford, Imperial College London, and a PhD focused on gaming psychology and psychometrics, he builds open, reproducible methods and partners with industry to access rich, multi-platform play data. He prioritizes rigorous measurement—bridging self-report and digital-trace approaches—to correct flaws in digital media research and produce actionable guidance for families and policy. Based in London, he archives much of his code and materials on the Open Science Framework, reflecting a commitment to transparency and independent data-sharing practices.
9 years of coding experience
3 years of employment as a software developer
Master of Philosophy (MPhil) Theoretical and Applied Linguistics, Master of Philosophy (MPhil) Theoretical and Applied Linguistics at University of CambridgeBachelor of Science (B.S.) Linguistics, Bachelor of Science (B.S.) Linguistics at Tulane UniversityPhD Psychology of Video Games and Games User Research, PhD Psychology of Video Games and Games User Research at Queen Mary University of London
Dutch, French, German
Github Skills (7)
jam7
open-science7
tetris6
mental-health6
baduk5
puzzle5
mobile-game1
Programming languages (5)
Github contributions (5)
nballou/nickballousite
Aug 2022 - Jan 2023
Contributions:42 commits, 69 pushes, 1 branch in 5 months
digital-wellbeing/open-play
Jul 2024 - May 2026
Open Play: A longitudinal dataset of multi-platform video game digital trace data and psychological measures
Contributions:1 release, 14 PRs, 80 pushes in 1 year 10 months
datasetmental-healthopen-sciencetrace-datavideo-games
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