Con­duct­ing and Opti­miz­ing Online Research with Prolific

Andrew Gor­don, Prolific
@Prolific

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Recent years have seen a surge in the amount of research being run online. Some esti­mates sug­gest that up to half of all cog­ni­tive sci­ence research will soon involve online sam­ples (Stew­art, Chan­dler, & Pao­lac­ci, 2017). For many researchers, the cur­rent COVID-19 pan­dem­ic has has­tened the need to tran­si­tion to online meth­ods of data col­lec­tion, and while online sam­pling has clear ben­e­fits rel­a­tive to in-per­son data col­lec­tion (e.g., faster data col­lec­tion larg­er, more rep­re­sen­ta­tive sam­ples), many remain unfa­mil­iar with this approach. More­over, con­cerns per­sist regard­ing the qual­i­ty of data that can be gleaned from online research meth­ods. At Pro­lif­ic our goal is to aid researchers in the col­lec­tion of high-qual­i­ty, trust­wor­thy data by build­ing the most advanced and trust­ed infra­struc­ture for research on the inter­net. With a net­work of 100,000+ pre-screened sur­vey par­tic­i­pants across North Amer­i­ca and Europe, and a com­mit­ment to estab­lish­ing an open, thought­ful and trust­wor­thy research space, our aim is to con­nect peo­ple around the world in order to facil­i­tate robust and reli­able research. This talk will pro­vide an overview of how to get start­ed with online research, with a spe­cif­ic focus on what you can do to ensure high-qual­i­ty data, and how we at Pro­lif­ic ensure data qual­i­ty from a par­tic­i­pant per­spec­tive. Fol­low­ing the talk, mem­bers of our team will be avail­able to help answer any ques­tions or con­cerns you may have about tran­si­tion­ing to online research.