Online Research

5 Key excerpts on "Online Research"

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  eBook - ePub

  Research Methods in Forensic Psychology

  • Barry Rosenfeld, Steven D. Penrod(Authors)
  • 2011(Publication Date)
  • Wiley

    (Publisher)

  The Internet offers new opportunities and possible avenues for research in forensic psychology, including but not limited to research on eyewitness identifications, juror decision making, forensic assessment tools, and special populations. Although some psycholegal research has used online data collection methods (e.g., Chrzanowski, 2006; Daftary-Kapur, 2009; Levett & Kovera, 2008), it is our view that the use of Web-based studies in psycholegal research could be expanded as one of the basic methods researchers use to investigate the workings of the legal system. This chapter is designed to introduce forensic psychologists to the methods involved in conducting survey and experimental research over the Internet. This chapter covers both the various advantages and potential issues with Web-based studies that researchers using online data collection methods should consider and provides some examples of successfully conducted Online Research in the field of forensic psychology.

  Types of Web-Based Research

  The Internet can be used for conducting research using various research methodologies that are traditionally employed in psychological studies. Two of those most often used by forensic psychologists and are discussed in detail in this chapter are survey methods and experimental methods.

  Several researchers have suggested that the Internet can be an effective means of collecting survey data. Musch and Reips (2000) interviewed psychologists who had conducted Internet studies and found that some of the advantages cited included access to a larger population, lower costs, and complete voluntary participation. Given that the administration of survey tools requires very little, if any, experimenter participation, the Web is ideal for collecting data when this methodology is appropriate for a study. Despite its perceived advantages, many researchers have speculated about the pros and cons of using the Internet for research (Kraut et al., 2004; Schmidt, 1997). To address these concerns, researchers have conducted empirical analyses of the quality of Internet data—specifically survey data collected from self-selected Internet samples.

  Riva, Teruzzi, and Anolli (2003) compared responses to a questionnaire collected via traditional methods to those collected over the Web. They found no differences in the psychometric properties or the internal reliability of the survey between the two samples, thus providing support to the viability of Web-based research as an alternative to traditional methods. Gosling, Vazire, Srivastava, and John (2004) conducted a comparative analysis with traditional paper-and-pencil data of six preconceptions about Web-based questionnaires. They found that Internet samples were relatively diverse and comparable to those found using traditional methods, results generalize across presentation formats, findings are not adversely affected by repeat responders, and findings are consistent with traditional methods.

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  eBook - ePub

  Understanding Research

  Coping with the Quantitative - Qualitative Divide

  • M.I. Franklin(Author)
  • 2012(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  http://www.globecartoon.com
• For others, the web is their research domain – field, sub-topic, or community – of choice; to locate particular sorts of online communities, enter various virtual worlds, or investigate textual/visual content. Some may conduct research that is entirely immersed in online domains, using methods developed by and for these computer-mediated undertakings. In this respect the term Online Research refers to the gamut of digital content, computer-mediated communities, relationships, and networks.
Whilst in computer-mediated scenarios many of the decisions governing respective disciplinary conventions of what constitutes viable research come under existing methodological rubrics, others see research students sometimes stranded in what is relatively uncharted territory. Here traditional boundaries and methodological working practices have less traction or are being transformed; whether anthropologists doing various sorts of ‘virtual ethnography’ are really doing fieldwork, how they get close to their ‘local inhabitants’, is one example.
For this reason Online Research is exciting and challenging for researchers – students and supervisors. There are new notions of ‘mixed-method’ or ‘multi-sited’ research design along with emerging disciplines based on the internet and/or the web as an object of theory and research in their own right.

Taking stock

The ways we use the internet in our everyday lives and workplace add up to a set of internet competencies: forms of ‘computer literacy’. This hands-on knowledge develops in generic and individual ways, for instance how we go about searching the web, manage incoming and outgoing emails, identify ourselves when registering for online services or interacting with others online in open or restricted-access web-spaces, locate reliable sources of news and information, or find out what’s on this weekend.