Online Research Resources
Resources for researchers conducting research using the internet.
Domain Names
Ethical Issues in Online Research
- American Psychological Association Board of Scientific Affairs Advisory Group on conducting research on the internet - APA ethical and scientific issues relating to online research.
- British Psychological Society ethics - BPS ethical issues and code of practice relating to online research.
Glossaries
- Glossary of computer and internet terms
- Glossary of internet and web jargon
- Glossary of internet terms
Other Websites Listing Online Studies
- Center for Atheist Research - Participate in research on atheism and secularity
- eLab Panel - Online community of people who participate in studies run by elab at the University of California.
- Games with words - Studies with a focus on language.
- iPsychExpts - Hosts (and creates) web experiments for psychologists who are conducting psychology research or teaching psychology.
- Lab-United – International Online-Research
- Masculinity Research Centre
- Mind Online - Hosts a variety of online studies.
- Mind Studies Online Psychology Lab - An online laboratory hosting various research projects run by social psychologists at the University of Southampton, UK.
- Online Social Psychology Network - A web site devoted to hosting online studies specifically in the area of social psychology.
- Psychological Research on the Net - One of the most comprehensive web sites listing online psychology related studies. The web site is maintained by John Krantz at Hanover College. It is definitely worth putting your study on this web site.
- Psychology experiments on the internet - This website hosts a range of online lab experiments.
- PsychStudies - Links to various studies being conducted online.
- Web experimental psychology lab - The web experimental psychology lab is maintained by the university of Zurich. This web site hosts studies of an experimental nature.
- WebExperiment.net - Hosts a variety of online studies.
- Yahoo's tests and experiments page
Recruiting Participants Through the Internet
- Free web submission - Add your website URL to multiple search engines.
- Google - Add your website URL to Google.
- JISCmail Mailing Lists
- List your study website on other websites listing online studies - list-your-study-website-on-other-websites-listing-online-studies
- List your study website on other websites listing online studies
- Medlist - Mailing list for areas in Biology, Medicine, Science and Technology (there is a charge for these lists).
- The StudyResponse Project - The StudyResponse project facilitates online research for behavioural, social, and organisational science researchers by distributing email participation requests to adult research participants.
- UK and worldwide newspapers
- 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.
- Yahoo - Add your website to Yahoo.
Recruiting Student Participants: Participant Pool Management
- Experimetrix - Internet service for managing participants.
- Sona Systems - Internet service for managing participants. The system can be used to assign credits to student for participating in online and real-time studies survey or lab studies, respectively. It can be linked to online survey software such as Surveymonkey.
Selected Research and References
- Dimensions of internet science - Book by Ulf-Dietrich Reips and Michael Bosnjak
- Dr. Tom Buchanan's home page - A key researcher in online research.
- Gender differences in online research - Contributed by Ivan McNally.
- Online research references
- Online social research references
- Online social sciences - Book by Bernard Batinic, Ulf-Dietrich Reips and Michael Bosnjak.
- Online survey design guide reference list
- Psychological experiments on the internet - Book by Michael Birnbaum
- Review of the online research literature - A comprehensive paper reviewing the online research literature by Marty Korse.
- Summary of 'Psychological experiments on the internet' - Chapter summary of Birnbaum’s book
Software/Programmes for Designing and Developing Online Studies
- 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.
- Easy Going Survey - Lets students and researchers easily create simple to complex surveys themselves. Free account and advanced subscriptions available.
- FactorWiz - FactorWiz was developed by Michael Birnbaum; it it similar to SurveyWiz but is used for factorial designs.
- 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).
- Gesis - A guide to available online survey software.
- 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.
- iPsychExpts - IPsychExpts is a company that creates and hosts web experiments for psychologists who are conducting psychology research or teaching psychology.
- LimeSurvey - A leading Open Source Online Survey Tool written in PHP, allowing you to develop, publish and collect responses to surveys.
- Lund Research - Specialises in providing custom web-based research solutions and online surveys to the academic and research community.
- OpenPSY - OpenPsy includes an online Data Collection component similar to SurveyMonkey or Zoomerang.
- Personality Science - For assisting psychology academics and PhD students with collecting data via the internet.
- PsychData - PsychData can help you develop web surveys and has numerous attractive features.
- Surveymonkey - One of the most popular online online survey software packages.
- SurveyWiz - SurveyWiz by Michael Birnbaum is a free programme that uses Javascript to create webpages in HTML form.
- Surveywriter - Surveywriter costs money (prices vary considerably depending on the options you wish to have built in) but includes a whole host of features.
- Unipark - Unipark provides Globalpark’s online survey software “Surveycenter” to chairs, lecturers and students at a reduced rate.
- Web online surveys - A system to create online questionnaires.
- 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.
Statistics on Internet Users
- Internet world statistics - A website showing statistics on the number of internet users across the world.
- UK national statistics - A useful site for obtaining statistics about UK internet users.
Technical Resources
- Browser Statistics
- 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.
- 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 scre
- Random password generator - Useful if you need to manually allocate a unique password to each study respondent.
Web Hosting
- 1and1 - Web hosting company.
- Find My Host - Find My Host is a web site dedicated to finding you a suitable hosting company.
- Host-it - Web hosting company.
- Review Centre – Web Hosting
Web Publishing Software
- Dreamweaver - Also used to design and upload websites. A little more complicated to use than Frontpage, but a good package
- Microsoft Office Frontpage - Used to design, build and upload websites. Simple to use, so a good choice if you’re new to web design.
Website Monitoring and Maintenance
- Google analytics - Free website traffic analysis i.e., how many people have visited your site each day, week, month and year.
- 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 t
- 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.
- 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.