Internet research,yes or no?
February 5, 2012
The internet is a relatively new area of research for psychologists. There is no doubt that the internet has a large impact on how people live their lives in modern society. Many hours of a person’s day can be spent on the internet especially now with the invention of smart phones which can allow access to the internet whenever, wherever. The question is what role does it play in research and how can it be used as an invaluable resource for gathering data and information.
The internet is used in many ways by psychologists and there is no doubt it is a handy tool. The breadth of know knowledge the internet has on offer is staggering and has come to be a truly amazing source of resources. The internet has also made academic research available to everyone through websites such as Google scholar, and not just those involved in academia (students, lecturers, doctors etc.)(1). Also the creation of the wiki websites Wikipedia being the biggest encyclopaedia known, put together by many different people(2). There is now also wiki scholar for a more credited source of information(3). The internet has allowed science to reach a much broader audience than ever before and it is important for researchers to keep up with the digital age.
The amount of people using the internet is enormous which means a large opportunity to study many types of people from all over the world (4). To researcher’s studying people the internet is like a sweetshop with the biggest variety you could ever imagine, but there are setbacks. The internet has large amounts of possible case studies waiting to happen but with any field study be it a busy town centre or an exotic tribe in the rainforest their can problems especially when it comes to ethics, reliability and validity. The internet is no different and perhaps has a higher risk of violating these essentials in a study than other field experiments. The issues are apparent when thinking about who is taking part in the study and whether they are adding reliable data to the experiment. The researcher doesn’t know if it really is one person, if they are being honest, are they just trying to look good, are they really who they say? A participant could lie and say they are a female when actually they are male. It is these kinds of variables that seriously damage the credibility of internet research (5). Ethics also need to be considered when conducting research on the internet.
The internet is considered a public domain so therefor researchers should be able to take what they need because people are expecting whatever actions they do to be observed, is this really true (6). Does it make it right that just because we put garbage on the street it would be ok for people to snoop down it to find out information, would you expect that? Is it ok for the press to do this to celebrities or those in the public eye? Can companies analyse your activities on the internet to direct advertising at the appropriate consumers because it’s a public domain? A study on the internet has offended the people they were trying to study by making them feel like they were abnormal and being used as lab rats. This brings to light the issue of researchers doing a study on the internet without thinking about their participants and the damage caused to research by their insensitivity (it is unlikely the people associated with this online community will want to participate in any other studies) (7, 8, 9).
In conclusion I feel the internet is a valuable source of information and has an ocean of possibilities when it comes to research. However I think that the guidelines on research over the internet should considered carefully in detail because the reputation of scientific research could be questioned by reckless behaviour by researchers.
References/Links
1. Google Scholar – http://scholar.google.co.uk/schhp?hl=en&as_sdt=0,5
2. Wikipedia – http://www.wikipedia.org/
3. Wiki-scholar – http://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Portal:Wiki_Scholar
4. World internet users and population stats – http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm
5. Internet Research: Comments on formulating the problem – http://ee.lbl.gov/papers/assumptions.pdf
6. Internet research ethics – http://www.nyu.edu/projects/nissenbaum/ethics_wal_full.html
7. How not to conduct research: Online ethics edition – http://www.psychologyinaction.org/2011/05/05/how-not-to-conduct-research-online-ethics-edition/
8. A billion wicked thoughts – http://www.billionwickedthoughts.com/index.html
9. Eruthros (forum where study took place) – http://eruthros.dreamwidth.org/273840.html
Between the lines... 
February 6, 2012 at 2:17 pm
Hello, really enjoyed your blog 🙂 I would just like to add my reason for being very wary of internet research. I think that the internet is a hugely beneficial way for researchers to get a lot of information very quickly but the type of information that they get is very limited. They only ‘observe’ participants while they are on the internet and so cannot conclude anything outside of this. They can claim that people are more likely to support someone of the same gender WHILE ON THE INTERNET and nothing else, for example. It also excludes the members of the population that do not use the internet. Looking forward to your next blog!
February 7, 2012 at 10:46 pm
It is true that the internet does not reach everyone, which is especially true for people living in rural locations. However the internet has not stopped growing since its boom in public availability in 1993. The internet at this time only carried 1% of information carried through 2 way tele-communication, in 2007 97% of telecommunication is held on the the internet (1). This means the availability of the internet is high in many continents (it’s even available in space), which is more people to test (2). However it is necessary more work is done to make the internet more accessible to everybody in a society, especially those of an older generation. We will get old too someday and it would be nice if people would help us accustom to knew technology, since it is harder to learn things in old age (3).
References
1. http://www.sciencemag.org/content/suppl/2011/02/08/science.1200970.DC1/Hilbert-SOM.pdf
2. http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2010/jan/HQ_M10-011_Hawaii221169.html
3. http://eric.ed.gov/ERICWebPortal/search/detailmini.jsp?_nfpb=true&_&ERICExtSearch_SearchValue_0=EJ614126&ERICExtSearch_SearchType_0=no&accno=EJ614126
February 7, 2012 at 2:15 pm
It was interesting to read about internet research, especially when the internet is widely used by millions of people. However, i personally believe that one should rely on reliable sources such as books and journals when conducting research as opposed to the internet as to what extent do you know if these websites have produced valid information? In addition, when conducting internet research, social desirability bias is indeed an issues because how do you know if these participants are providing you with valid data? They could merely just be providing you with answers that aid or inhibit your research. Furthermore, when conducting internet research you are indeed not taking into account those people who do not have access to the internet which therefore limits to what extent you can generalise your findings to the wider population.
February 7, 2012 at 11:26 pm
The problem of individual differences over the internet is a big problem over the internet, whose to say the research will not be ‘trolled’. Interestingly research indicates that it is those that are educated that are more active on the internet, especially those in still in education (1). It is arguable that only educated people would participate in such studies or would be more honest at least, but that is not always the case. Discussing situations and problems online gives a person anonymity, so they feel more able to talk about sensitive things and be honest about them (2).
1. http://www.bsos.umd.edu/socy/alan/webuse/handouts/Nie%20and%20Erbring-Internet%20and%20Society%20a%20Preliminary%20Report.pdf
2. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0747563201000590
February 7, 2012 at 4:57 pm
Very interesting blog, I would have to agree that although the internet is a very valuable research tool, sometimes sticking to the books and journals is a better idea. When it comes to internet research, yes there are social desirability biases as World of Statistics has pointed out. But in any experiment such as simply handing out questionnaires there is bound to be social desirability bias so that should not be a reason to discredit internet research. When it comes to generalising these finding to the wider population, yes, it will only affect people with the internet. But with the invention of smart phone and internet cafe’s most people can gain access no matter where they are in the world. Unlike some studies that only benefit and can only be generalised to western society or a small sector of people such as patients suffering from schizophrenia.
February 7, 2012 at 11:12 pm
I agree that simply distributing questionnaires or surveys and gathering results is not good enough as stand alone evidence for a theory. However I feel that as technology progresses there will be many possibilities for research conducted on the internet, such as studying how interactions between family and friends using programmes like Skype influence people (1). Furthermore is the wide and constant access to world around actually a good thing through the boom in popularity of smart phones, research suggest that it actually harmful to our state of mind by causing stress (2). However other possibilities are smart phones that can keep an eye on our heartbeat and send updates to hospitals through the internet (3).
1. http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1753563
2. http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/freeabs_all.jsp?arnumber=4124124
3. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/12/smartphones-cause-stress_n_1202924.html
February 7, 2012 at 7:26 pm
I agree that if using the internet on as a research tool you need to tread carefully. I think the internet can be a quick and easy way to research various topics but I think reliable sources (such as books and research reports should be used). However there can be reliable and creditable sources online. for example looking at url can indicate if the source is creditable. An example is ‘.gov’ generally means is a government website which can be useful in statistical research. I think chat rooms etc. can be useful in qualitative research as anonymous comments can be accessed but like a few of you have said these people could be lying about themselves or what they are saying so it is hard to assess how reliable and valid their comments are. I think the internet can be used as a stepping stone to get general ideas on the direction you want to research (academically and generally) and then back it up with more reliable sources like books then I think this is acceptable. It is a difficult topic as the world today is becoming so technical and internet based that it could be quite possible that research may turn to this aswell and I am sure we all hope that research is not purely based on internet research. This link helped me understand what kinds of websites can generally be reliable but this website does stress that the internet should just be used as a stepping stone and should not be used alone. (http://homeworktips.about.com/od/researchandreference/a/internet.htm )
http://netforbeginners.about.com/od/navigatingthenet/tp/How-to-Properly-Research-Online.htm << this website explains more indepth how to research properly online that all research should be backed up and we should be skeptical when finding sources (especially online). and reminds us it is called REsearch for a reason because everything must be repeated and looked at thoroughly.
February 7, 2012 at 11:46 pm
I agree that the internet is too valuable a source to discard its use in research, especially when researchers can use it to study so many people. Plus it would be foolish to do this because research over the internet is cheap and easy to do(1). Internet research could also allow us to study internet behavior that differs from our actions normally, such as why do we spend more or less shopping online (2, 3). This would be a way of getting a reliable result without worrying to much about whether the participant is being honest because its the action of ‘buying’ being measured, not opinion.
1. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0092656605000668
2. http://www.emeraldinsight.com/journals.htm?articleid=857781&show=abstract
3. http://www.emeraldinsight.com/journals.htm?articleid=863666&show=abstract
February 7, 2012 at 8:40 pm
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February 8, 2012 at 1:15 pm
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February 8, 2012 at 6:14 pm
No, in my opinion internet research is not an accurate and reliable way of collecting data. Opinions that may be put on the web may not be accurate to what they actually believe. Many people have fallen victim of issuing statements, comments, ideas and opinions online in the heat of the moment. Which later they end up regretting and retract the comment. How can you guarantee that you don’t use a comment as a source only for it to be deleted? How can you be sure that the website will not be shut down? How can you guarantee in the analysis of these online forums that they are not making information up? Someone may say that they are a 14years old female (when in fact they are nothing of the sort) they are actually male and 21years old. By taking that data and accepting that persons information as fact you are lead to the possibility of interpreting the data all wrong. Nothing on the internet is certain, people can behave a lot more confident on the internet with a lot less consideration of responsibility as they can maintain a sense of anonymity. Not to mention you have all the issues with ethics and the gaining of consent from participants. So overall I think that although it would be great to be able to use the internet as a source of information it is subject to much subjectivity, chance and ethics, not to mention many other variables.
February 21, 2012 at 12:20 pm
The problem with variance is a huge problem but I feel it would be just as bad to ignore the internet as a research source. A way to study on the internet must be devised because it has a huge impact on a persons life, for psychology to ignore the impact it is having on people would be reductionist. If scientists in the past ignored the fact that a behavior occurred because it was hard to test then revolutions in science such as the t-test and the ANOVA would never have been invented (1). Therefor science would not have progressed as far today because the resources required to conducted them would take to much time and money, more than sponsors would be prepared to pay. Not to mention the sample size need to gain a significant results were large (2).
1. – http://ccnmtl.columbia.edu/projects/qmss/the_ttest/introduction_2.html
– http://lssacademy.com/2007/06/20/how-beer-influenced-statistics/
2. – http://ccnmtl.columbia.edu/projects/rcr/rcr_conflicts/foundation/index.html
– http://undsci.berkeley.edu/article/who_pays
February 8, 2012 at 10:08 pm
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February 10, 2012 at 10:10 pm
The internet is an every expanding well of knowledge and information and can be used to great benifit. It has already been used to form new ideas such as the Six Degrees of Separation (Watts, 2003). This theory gave a wealth of information in a social perspective. We now know that people and social networks work like railways, there are smaller stations which are your ‘average joes’ and then you have you main stations which are the ‘socialites’ (also known in separation terms as hubs) . Smaller stations only have a few connections, but all it takes is one connection to a hub and then all the stations connected to that much greater station become accessable. Therefore we are all theoretically connected to each other via these hubs. Studying information on the internet made it possible to see this phenomenon in action. The potential of learning social theories of psychology through the means of the internet could therefore be astronomical. It is well known that the internet is a puclic domain and just as you can conduct covert observations in public environments so should you be able to on the internet. Did you not get your references/data to back up your statements off the internet?
February 21, 2012 at 12:49 pm
That is very interesting! The internet is a diverse place when it comes to the variety of people who use it and have regular access. When it comes to social psychology I agree that the internet is a goldmine, if the staggering number of people using social networking sites is anything to go by. The average number of people estimated to visit forums on the internet is estimated to be well over 300 million. Social networking sites such as Facebook have over 200 million logins by people a month in 2010, it is estimated that 1 in 5 people who have access to the internet visit Facebook (1). That is an amazing amount of people and s possible population that scientists would never have access too without it. I believe that once a technique of studying efficiently on the internet empirically is devised there will be a influx of new theories and discoveries in the scientific world (2).
1. – http://techcrunch.com/2010/02/01/facebook-coo-sheryl-sandberg-world-economic-forum-davos/
– http://www.quora.com/How-many-people-around-the-world-are-using-internet-forums
2. – http://www.kon.org/archives/forum/11-1/harris.html
– http://tigger.uic.edu/~lskitka/Peril.pdf
February 10, 2012 at 10:37 pm
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February 15, 2012 at 2:42 pm
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February 16, 2012 at 5:47 pm
You’ve raised some very valuable points I think – although the internet is a fast and efficient way to reach a lot of people, there is the obvious downside that there is absolutely no way to guarantee validity or reliability – as all of the participants are anonymous in the sense that you haven’t met them and therefore can’t verify that any information they have posted is actually real. This is a significant disadvantage as both reliability and validity are needed for results to be useful. This does not stop websites such as the bbc using the internet to do psychological research, such as “the big personality test” (https://www.bbc.co.uk/labuk/results/personality/).
In my opinion, the internet is not a good method for psychological research, as the only claims you can accurately measure are ones about internet activity itself (eg. finding out how many users are on facebook is reliable and valid) but you can’t accurately measure processes and people themselves as you don’t know if the answers to surveys and questionnaires.etc are valid or if people are just clicking buttons at random, and you can’t control for extraneous variables such as lots of people entering twice, and you can’t use random sampling to control extraneous variables as everything is opportunistic sampling
February 21, 2012 at 1:51 pm
As I mentioned in previous comments I agree that the methodology on the internet must be rigorous in order to address the validity and reliability issues. However I don’t agree that psychological research is only limited to findings such as the activities as it can only tell you limited information. The phenomenal amounts of people visiting Facebook would be the initial research conducted to come up with a satisfactory hypothesis but it would not be able to stand alone. However I think it would be interesting to study how many people change their behavior online and how much so, for example the amount of people who troll on YouTube (1). This could have something to do with people committing inappropriate acts they would not commit under normal circumstances because they believe they have no responsibility for it, or there will be no punishment for their actions. Milgram’s experiments that show people will commit and carryout unethical acts without a problem when they believe they have no responsibility is in support of this (2).
1. – http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/sep/13/internet-troll-jailed-mocking-teenagers
– http://videointerweb.com/2010/07/21/what-is-a-youtube-troll/
2. – http://www.lordashcroft.com/pdf/03042011_crime_punishment_and_the_people.pdf
– http://cnr.berkeley.edu/ucce50/ag-labor/7article/article35.htm
– http://psychology.about.com/od/historyofpsychology/a/milgram.htm
February 22, 2012 at 4:22 pm
I see your point, but what I meant to say is that there is no research that can be verified as reliable or valid if it is entirely online – the example you mentioned of people changing their behaviour online requires interaction with people in an offline environment which improves reliability or validity. Experiments and surveys that are entirely online have the significant disadvantage that there is no way to prove the existence of the actual participant (as it stands.. it may be possible to make websites that require identity and verification in future) so what I am saying is the internet is a good medium for monitoring online behaviour (naturally) but i don’t think it is a good tool to measure other behaviour such as ethical dilemma’s/reaction times and most of the stuff we do in SONA because there is not way to verify if it’s an actual person or somebody “trolling” as you mentioned, which commonly occurs on the internet. We also have sampling issue such as not being able to use random sampling – if you are asking for opinions for free then you are only getting participants who are willing to do so which could be an extraneous variable… if you pay them you’re also creating an extraneous variable…. whereas in real world experiments you can at least guarantee the participants are real and that they are a random cross-section; even if it’s of a limited group. Therefore i think studies like that that are carried out online using surveys etc are unlikely to get published or given much credibility because there are so many variables to consider. online surveys are mostly used by marketing research companies now and I don’t think have much credibility in psychology yet for the reasons discussed above.
February 16, 2012 at 7:37 pm
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February 20, 2012 at 1:10 pm
I think that research on the internet is one of those things that is going to have many advantages and disadvantages and is going to be heavily debated for a while!
In terms of using the internet to find research papers, I think that it is excellent because it is so much easier to type into google scholar key words for what you are looking at and being able to access all the papers with a simple click, than to go trawling through the library trying to find journals etc.
I think that you raised the main issues when using the internet too actually conduct research. Although, even when meeting your participants face to face, they could still lie to you about their age (for example say they were 18 when really they were under), for example, but I do however, completely agree that things like lying about age, gender and culture etc. will be a lot easier on the internet which is going to cause a whole lot of validity issues for the researcher.
I really enjoyed reading your blog and think that you highlighted interesting questions and provided a good debate
February 21, 2012 at 2:37 pm
I agree that the demographic details on the internet can be a serious complication when conducting research. It would be interesting if research could be conducted where the the demographics are not so important, since people are always going to be able to lie, therefor causing the reliability and validity to suffer. The best way would be to focus more the IV and DV (1). However there is also the possibility that people are more honest on the internet because they are speaking or debating about a subject to people they will never meet, so their are no immediate implications or consequences for the things they say (2). A good example is if you were to conduct research on parents that have disabled children. They may be more willing to answer a questionnaire over the internet because it is less emotionally stressful than talking about a very sensitive issue in front of a stranger e.g. the researcher (3). The problem arises though when you taking information from a forum without asking, the person may not want their information shared and looked in the scientific community as journal article. The internet maybe a public domain but that does not give you the right to do what you want. I would no go onto a forum expecting scientific research is being conducted on there, especially if I will be discussing sensitive issues (4).
1. http://iteslj.org/Articles/Kasper-Focus/
2. http://psychology.about.com/od/historyofpsychology/a/milgram.htm
3. http://www.metanoia.org/imhs/therapists4a.htm
4. – http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC59687/
– http://www.nyu.edu/projects/nissenbaum/ethics_cap_full.html
February 20, 2012 at 1:14 pm
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February 22, 2012 at 10:50 pm
I would like to forward you onto my most recent blog titled, ‘The psychology of Facebook’, where I discuss whether we lose the right to consent if we post information on the internet without using the possible privacy settings that are available. My main focus when concerning the reliability and validity of the possible data out there, is that we will not be able to guarantee honesty on behalf of the participants. I also believe that the issue of privacy and where researchers should draw the line when conducting internet research needs to be clearly drawn and rigidly supervised.
February 22, 2012 at 11:53 pm
I think this a really interesting debate. The internet has so much potential for research but like you say there are ethical issues.
You can find websites and message boards and support groups for pretty much any mental illness under the sun. This would be a perfect place for someone studying abnormal psychology to gather data and recruit participants. It could have huge research benefits and greatly help understanding.
However, even though the internet is public domain, I don’t think we should just be able to do as we please with people’s data. Informed consent would not be gained and I think people would be angry if it came out that psychologists were analysing their private posts and thoughts. Also we have to consider that people may be lying, and even if they are not lying, we only see a very small part of their life over the internet, how much can we really tell from this?
February 23, 2012 at 12:54 am
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