Theory and Techniques of Conducting Web Experiments
Ulf‐Dietrich Reips · KOPS (University of Konstanz) · 2002
Web experiments, the core theme of this chapter, have an advantage over two other methods, nonreactive data collection and online surveys, because of their ability in proving causal relationships between variables. This advantage implicitly facilitates deductive, hypothesis testing research, in which the much disputed question of representativeness is not posed - in comparison to other study procedures. In the following sections, I will introduce a demonstration of the potential of Web experiments in comparison to the two aforementioned nonexperimental online research methods. The first part of the chapter explains the historical and theoretical background for different types of research methods. The second part of the chapter is devoted to several useful techniques for Web experimenting, such as warm-up, password, subsampling, participant pool, and multiple site entry.