Advanced Methods for Conducting Online Behavioral Research

Contributors

I. Getting Started

1. How to Use This Book
   —John A. Johnson and Samuel D. Gosling
2. An Overview of Major Techniques of Web-Based Research
   —Michael H. Birnbaum

II. Considerations When Designing Web Pages

3. Design and Formatting in Internet-Based Research
   —Ulf-Dietrich Reips
4. Using Graphics, Photographs, and Dynamic Media
   —John H. Krantz and John E. Williams
5. Drag & Drop: A Flexible Method for Moving Objects, Implementing Rankings, and a Wide Range of Other Applications
   —Wolfgang Neubarth

III. Studying Internet Behavior

6. Collecting Data From Social Networking Web Sites and Blogs
   —Elizabeth Mazur
7. Using Automated "Field Notes" to Observe the Behavior of Online Subjects
   —Sonja Utz
8. Automatic Text Analysis
   —Matthias R. Mehl and Alastair J. Gill

IV. Transporting Traditional Methodologies to the Web

9. Internet-Based Ability Testing
   —Ulrich Schroeders, Oliver Wilhelm, and Stefan Schipolowski
10. Web-Based Self-Report Personality Scales
    —John A. Johnson
11. Online Collection of Informant Reports
    —Simine Vazire
12. Conducting Online Surveys
    —Tracy L. Tuten
13. Conducing True Experiments on the Web
    —Ulf-Dietrich Reips and John H. Krantz

V. Cross-Cutting Issues

14. Using Lotteries, Loyalty Points, and Other Incentives to Increase Participant Response and Completion
    —Anja S. Göritz
15. Security and Data Protection: Collection, Storage, and Feedback in Internet Research
    —Olaf Thiele and Lars Kaczmirek
16. Ethical Issues in Psychological Research on the Internet
    —Tom Buchanan and John E. Williams

Index

About the Editors

Samuel D. Gosling, PhD, is a professor of psychology at the University of Texas at Austin. He has been using the Internet to collect data since the mid 1990s, when he created a questionnaire to collect personality ratings of pets by their owners. Since then, he has published numerous articles that make use of data collected on the Internet; these articles focus on such diverse topics as personality change over the life span, the links between music preferences and personality, geographic variation in psychological traits, and perceptions of others based on their Web sites and their online social networking profiles (e.g., Facebook). His 2004 American Psychologist article focused on evaluating the pros and cons of Internet methods.

Dr. Gosling's substantive research has focused on animal personality and on how human personality is manifested in everyday contexts like bedrooms, offices, clothing, Web pages, and music preferences. The latter topic was summarized in his book, Snoop: What Your Stuff Says About You (2008).

Dr. Gosling is a recipient of an American Psychological Association Distinguished Scientific Award for Early Career Contribution.

John A. Johnson, PhD, is a professor of psychology at the Pennsylvania State University, DuBois. He also serves as the consultant for the International Personality Item Pool, a Web-based repository for psychological measures in the public domain. He entered the field of computer-assisted psychological research in 1986, when he wrote microcomputer programs for scoring and interpreting the Hogan Personality Inventory. When the World Wide Web emerged in the 1990s, he transported concepts from these programs to the Web. He has published research on assessing the validity of data collected on the Internet and on sharing data through Web-based collaboratories.