How to run behavioural experiments online: best practice suggestions for cognitive psychology and neuroscience

Abstract

The combination of a replication crisis, global COVID-19 pandemic, and recent technological advances have accelerated the on-going transition of research in cognitive psychology and behavioural neuroscience to the online realm. When participants cannot be tested in-person in the laboratory, data of acceptable quality can be collected online still. While conducting research online has many advantages and generic advice on their infrastructure and implementation exists, numerous pitfalls can hinder researchers addressing their research question appropriately or even result in unusable data. Here, we present detailed best practice suggestions that span the range from initial study design to the final interpretation of the data. These suggestions take a critical look at issues regarding the recruitment of typical and (sub)clinical samples, their comparison, and the importance of context dependency for each part of a study. We illustrate our suggestions by means of arecent online study investigating cognitive working memory skills in adult dyslexia.