Research and the Internet Flashcards
Historical types of communication of research
- over a month sea voyage (Aus-UK)
- up until 1980s: snail mail
- 1980s: email / bulletin boards
- 1990s: Age of the internet (rapid transmission, broadcasting of information)
Ongoing rapid changes in technology mean both opportunities and challenges for researchers.
For households with children under 15:
More likely to have internet access
Global differences in Internet access
90-100% for Canada, Australia, UK, Japan
Still large Internet black spots (Central Africa)
What is Open Access Publication
The internet has facilitated publication and the ease with which publications can be disseminated.
Computer scientists archiving their work online since 1970s
Physicicists archiving their work since 1990s in arXiv
Psycholoquy
Journal of Vision
Why did open access publication come around?
ppl who worked at universities did research with tax dollars and would send this to an editor, then sent off to reviewers (tax dollars) then they would publish it in the journal and publishers would make a lot of money.
Now it is open access
But now they charge contributors for us to consider their research.
How does the internet help with conducting psychology studies?
- Research study administration (sign ups, credit, consent) \
- data collection (online surveys with automatic test scoring - LimeSurvey, Qualtrix, SurveyMonkey)
- creation of useful platforms to display stimuli and have tight experimental controls (much better at getting control of stimuli, reaction time, etc)
- makes it easier to do evaluations of clinical programs
What are the research possibilities with the internet?
- internet as object of study
- studying online behaviour
- new domain for behaviours / comments / opinions
What are researcher advantages associated with the internet?
- you can email invitations to participate and tell them to forward the email to others (snowball sampling)
- research sites (voluntary)
- work for mTurk
- democratized data collection (equality in research accessibility)
- large, diverse sample at low cost
- can focus on specific groups, historical reords, digital transactions, quantitative and qualitative material
- potentially less experimenter bias
- automated and standardized delivery
- faster data collection
- internet more familiar and interesting –> increased motivation
Researcher / ethical advantages
- anonymity and increased self-revelation via online research
- less effort / cost (i.e. completing survey in your home = more likely to participate)
- decreased social pressure and greater freedom to withdraw
What are some researcher disadvantages?
- sample biases and generalisability
- non-response bias and drop out
- no control over data collection setting
- researcher is absent, so hard to monitor their identity / age / gender / humanity / understanding of instructions
- participant may invest less energy
- some may have malicious intent
- security issues due to data in transit
- tech failure + tech compatibility
- multiple submissions (repeat participations)
- researchers need to become greater tech experts
Threats to ‘data quality’ (validity / reliability)
Solutions:
- pilot and pretest
- collect data from ‘trustworthy’ source and internet sample for comparison
- good management - recording IP address to avoid multiple submissions ; motivation incentives)
- establish objective exclusion criteria (timing and attention checks)
What are some ethical disadvantages?
- ethical ambiguity (observing naturally occurring online behaviour)
- harm resulting from direct participation
- ethics and debriefing (what if they become distressed from your survey)
- breaches of confidentiality
