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Post by Lourenço on Apr 26, 2020 18:41:07 GMT
Hello fellow psychology researchers.
I'm a master's student of psychology in Brazil. No easy times here...
I'm going to do my experiment using the Simon paradigm. I was originally going to collect the data on my team's laboratory in the University with 50 people.
But, because the recent pandemic situation of Covid-19 and the fact Brazil is now under a mild lockdown that will extend at least until August (for universities, at least), the Ethic's Board will not approve any research that collects data live, and will only approve online data collection.
My question is more about methodology, though. I've searched if any study conducted the Simon task using online data collection, and I have not find anything. I would say is not viable, because of all the variables we cannot control, like screen size, screen distance from the participant's face, lenght of the keyboard, processing power of the participant's computer, refresh rate of the participant's monitor, etc...
Has anybody ever done the Simon task using online data collection and have achieved significant results?
I'm scared my whole experimental project will not work using this form of data collection.
Any thoughts?
Thank you for all the support and the absolutely amazing toll you have created for psychology students and researchers from all the globe!
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Post by PsyToolkit on Apr 26, 2020 21:42:08 GMT
There is actually an open access research article about an online study which used the Simon task; it uses PsyToolkit. The Methods section describes the exact online methodology:
The paper even comes with a demonstration such that you can simply use the same code. Make sure you cite the article appropriately:
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Post by Lourenço on Apr 26, 2020 22:12:08 GMT
There is actually an open access research article about an online study which used the Simon task; it uses PsyToolkit. The Methods section describes the exact online methodology:
The paper even comes with a demonstration such that you can simply use the same code. Make sure you cite the article appropriately:
Wow, thank you so much for the quick response.
Some life's casuality: your paper, this same one you've linked me, was mentioned in my project approval last week. One of the professors asked me about any possible sex differences in reaction-time, and I did not know any, so he linked me your study, and I had still had not the time (weird phrase here, sorry for any possible english mistake) to look it and read it. Now I definitely will! Citations accordingly sure.
Thank you!
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Post by lourenco on Apr 26, 2020 22:45:06 GMT
If you allow me further questioning, now I've read the paper:
In this specific case I can see why there was no problem using big data online collection, since the most important controlled variable for the purpose of the the paper was sex/gender, which is very straitghforwardly controlled. You could conclude correctly the enviromental variables were proportionely distributed across both sex.
In my case, where I'm testing specific attentional mechanisms, like response preparation or attention shift, would you assume as reasonable that the same enviromental factors were not influence data? Since I'm testing intertrial effects within subjects, wouldn't be unreasonable to make the same assumption?
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Post by PsyToolkit on Apr 27, 2020 0:40:12 GMT
I think you can certainly carry out such a study online, I don't see why not, really.
Sure, there will be uncontrollable variation in a number of factors, but you'd assume that that is fairly randomly distributed. It might add random noise to your data, but that is not really a problem.
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Post by lourenco on Apr 28, 2020 14:21:47 GMT
Thank you for your answer! I've read one paper you cite, they've actually validated online data collection using Amazon Mechanical Turk, so that's great.
I will possibly write one paper about the validity of PsyToolKit reaction time online experiments in the brazilian population. Should be out mid-2021.
Thank you again, for the answers and for the amazing tool.
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Post by PsyToolkit on Apr 28, 2020 21:03:44 GMT
Okay, sounds great, I look forward to reading it. Please mail me when it comes out. When using PsyToolkit in your research, make sure you cite both papers, as explained in the FAQ:
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