Online Psychology Research UK

Resources for Conducting Online Research

Note to researchers: If you are designing an online study and only want UK participants in your sample, be sure to either a) state this on your website as well as stating that participants must be native English speakers, or b) ask for demographic info such as country and whether the participant is a native English speaker, so that you can then later select UK participants for use in your analyses.

Other Websites Listing Online Studies

Web Publishing Software

  • Microsoft Office Frontpage - Used to design, build and upload websites. Simple to use, so a good choice if you're new to web design. Buy Frontpage from Amazon

  • Dreamweaver - Also used to design and upload websites. A little more complicated to use than Frontpage, but a good package. Buy Dreamweaver from Amazon

Software/Programmes for Designing and Developing Online Studies (many of these cost money but prices vary)

  • SurveyWiz - SurveyWiz by Michael Birnbaum is a free programme and is really simple to use. The programme uses Javascript to create webpages in HTML form and is excellent for novices! Simply create your code using the programme and then copy and paste it into the "code" page of a web publishing programme such as Microsoft Frontpage

  • FactorWiz - FactorWiz is (also developed by Michael Birnbaum) is similar to Survey Wiz but is used for factorial designs. To view the journal article for SurveyWiz and FactorWiz click here

  • Free Online Surveys - Free online survey builder that's simple to use (the free service only allows you to create surveys with ONE page and 20 questions).

  • BooRoo - Online survey creation.

  • PsychData - PsychData can help you develop web surveys and has numerous attractive features.

  • iPsychExpts - IPsychExpts is a company that creates and hosts web experiments for psychologists who are conducting psychology research or teaching psychology.

  • Personality Science - For assisting psychology academics and PhD students with collecting data via the internet.

  • Web online surveys

  • Surveymonkey - The number of researchers using Surveymonkey to design their online studies appears to be rising, suggesting that Surveymonkey is a useful programme for the design and development of online studies.

  • Web Survey Software - The directory of survey software helps you quickly find online survey software appropriate for you type of study.

  • Zoomerang - Survey software that appears easy to use.

  • PHP surveyor - A leading Open Source Online Survey Tool written in PHP, allowing you to develop, publish and collect responses to surveys.

  • Internet research assistant - Internet research assistant assists researchers with their research and data collection by creating your study website for you. Pricing varies depending on the features you need on your website.

  • Surveywriter - Surveywriter costs money (prices vary considerably depending on the options you wish to have built in). The software has a whole host of features.

  • BOS - Bristol Online Surveys has been developed by the University of Bristol. The software is reasonably pricey for individual research and is better suited to being purchased by the institution for a number of online researchers to use.

  • Unipark - Unipark provides Globalpark's online survey software "Surveycenter" to chairs, lecturers and students at a reduced rate. With Surveycenter scientific institutions are able to conduct complex surveys for scientific purposes professionally, quickly and cost-effectively.

  • OpenPSY - OpenPsy includes an online Data Collection component similar to SurveyMonkey or Zoomerang.

  • Gesis - A guide to available online survey software

  • Lund Research - Specialises in providing custom web-based research solutions and online surveys to the academic and research community.

Participant Pool Management

Resources for Designing and Developing Online Studies

  • ProjectLeipzig.org - ProjectLeipzig.org is a new site dedicated to promoting and advancing online research. ProjectLeipzig.org provides a centre for people using the internet as a research platform to share ideas, gain assistance and collaborate in the development of new approaches to research. The site includes features such as a community forum, links to resources and articles, and a section for members to informally publish articles relating to online research.

Web Hosting

In a nut shell, web hosting services provide customers with space on the internet from which to conduct research and store information etc.

  • 1and1 - 1and1 appear to be a reliable internet hosting company.

  • host-it - Another reliable hosting company (recommended from someone currently hosting their online study on host-it).

  • Find My Host - Find My Host is a web site dedicated to finding you a suitable hosting company.

  • Web Hosting Service Reviews - Side-by-side comparisons, reviews, articles and information regarding web hosting services (clicking on "links" at the bottom of this webpage leads to pages of other useful resources).

  • Review Centre - Web Hosting - Compare ratings for the top web hosting companies.

Domain Names

Domain names are the word sequences users enter in their URL bar to visit your website e.g., www.onlinepsychresearch.co.uk is the domain name for this website. If you purchase software to programme your website for you then you should be given a domain name as well. If however, you programme your website yourself, you will need to purchase a domain name as well as a web hosting package. Most web hosting companies such as 1-and-1 enable you to purchase a domain name at the time of registration with their web hosting package.

Help with Programming your Website

If you'd rather not use software to help you develop and programme your study, then you'll need to learn some basic programming skills.

HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language) and ASP (Active Server Pages) are languages that are widely used in the creation of web pages. HTML is relatively quick and simple to learn, but this means that you are limited in the things that you can get your website to do. ASP is more complicated and may therefore be necessary for more complex websites i.e., websites that go beyond the simple question and radio button design. You can of course use multiple programming languages in your website, and HTML and ASP are just 2 of many languages that are available.If you are new to website design and development it may be a good idea to stick with a simple website designed using HTML, unless of course you have the time to learn a complex programming language such as ASP. Have a look at the resources below to help you decide whether or not you could learn any of these languages. Remember, if you can't program your website yourself, there is now software available to do this for you (see above resources).

HTML Resources:

ASP Resources:

Other:

  • AddScript.com - AddScript.com contains numerous programming script resources for scripts such as ASP scripts, ASP.Net scripts, Java scripts, XML scripts, CGI scripts and C++ scripts. If you're interested in learning some complex programming skills then this website is a good place to start. Resources include online tutorials, software and tools for developing scripts, books on programming languages and many more.

  • JavaScript

  • Useful web links

Some Technical Resources

  • Meta tag analyzer - A tool for analyzing the meta tags in the index (i.e., home) page of your web site i.e., the tool analyzes the relevance of the tags and whether there are any errors (to learn what meta tags are click here).

  • Onestat - Onestat provides statistics on the most popular screen resolutions used by internet users. Screen resolution signifies the number of dots (pixels) on the screen and therefore affects text size and readability. Although you can't actually control what screen resolution someone uses to browse the internet, you can design your website so that is compatible with the most popular screen resolution. However, make sure you test your website in different screen resolutions via the settings on your PC, as you may find that your font size is impossible to read with certain resolutions.

  • Browser Statistics - Internet browser statistics to determine which browser (e.g., Internet Explorer, Firefox, Netscape) is used most. Testing your website in different browsers is an essential part of web design, as some programming features may be incompatible with certain browsers.

  • Conversion calculators - Useful if you are recruiting participants from other countries as well as the UK. For example, if you ask participants to provide their height in feet and inches, participants who work in metres and centimetres will need to convert their answer.

  • Random password generators: One Two Three Four - Useful if you need to allocate a unique password to each study respondent.

Marketing your Website (some useful resources for recruiting participants)

Search engines:

The thing to be aware of when submitting your site to the major search engines such as Google and Yahoo, is that your site may not be listed for a few months from the date of submission. Also, there is no guarantee that your site will get listed. Less well known search engines, however, can list your site instantly (see the links "Free web submission" and "Submit corner" below). Finally, unless you can get your site listed in the top-ten in search engines such as Yahoo and Google (which can take years), you should not expect to recruit many participants via search engines.

  • Search engine watch - Includes lots of really detailed info. regarding marketing your web site via search engines.

  • Google - Add your website URL to Google.

  • Yahoo - Add your site to Yahoo.

  • British search engines

  • Free web submission - Add your website URL to multiple search engines for free!

  • Submit corner - Add your website URL to multiple search engines for free.

  • Website Promotion Guide - Information on how to promote your website by using numerous strategies such as increasing your page rank in Google and submitting your site to top search engines and directories.

Other:

Firstly, ensure that you add your study web link to other websites listing online studies (see "Other Web Sites Listing Online Studies" section above).

  • JISCmail mailing lists - A national academic mailing list service. Send a plea for help with your research to members of e-mail mailing lists. Although these lists are academic, members comprise of a diverse range of people.

  • Medlist - Mailing list for areas in Biology, Medicine, Science and Technology (there is a charge for these lists of approx. £165 per 1000 names and addresses).

  • UK newspapers - Lists of thousands of newspapers across the UK. I have used these lists to find newspapers to contact regarding placing a request for research participants in the newspaper.

  • UK and worldwide newspapers

  • The StudyResponse Project - The StudyResponse project facilitates online research for behavioural, social, and organizational science researchers by distributing email participation requests to adult research participants.

Website Monitoring and Maintenance

  • Search engine ranker - Use keyword searches to check if your website has any positions (e.g., top 10 or top 100) in the major search engines.

  • Link Popularity - Find out your link popularity (link popularity is the total number of web sites that link to your site). This may not be useful if your study is only running online for a few months, but if your study is online for a long period of time, then increasing the number of links to your site may help you recruit more participants.

  • Google analytics - Free website traffic analysis i.e., how many people have visited your site each day, week, month and year.

  • Free Counters - Choose from lots of different hit counters to place on your site to keep track of how many people visit your web site.

  • Rapid Counters - More free hit counters. Choose from lots of different designs.

  • Site Counter - A free Website invisible hit counter to monitor your website's traffic. Other website statistics are also available e.g., a search engine keyword analysis.

  • Free web counters - Free hit counters that will not count two sequential hits from the same IP address (this avoids your hit counter figure rising when users refresh the web page or navigate forwards and backwards through your study).

"Selected" Research and Resources Relating to Online Research

Ethical Issues in Online Research

Glossaries (great for those both familiar or unfamiliar with the internet and internet research)

Other

If you know any other useful resources for this list or have found any dead of outdated links on this website please e-mail me