OSWeb for Reaction Times

MicolG

Hi,

I was wondering to what extent Osweb may be sensitive to different reaction-times. Let me break this down.

I'm planning an online experiment and it should be sensitive to differences in reaction times among partecipants.

It could be a good idea to specify which kind of browser and operating system participants should use (e.g. Chrome from Windows)?

May other variables among partecipants have an impact on reaction times?

Thus, I might make those variables fixed at first.

Thanks,

MG

lvanderlinden

Hi @MicolG ,

May other variables among participants have an impact on reaction times?

Herewith some general (personal) advice. For recent publications on timing in online experiments, see for example Anwyl-Irvine et al. (2020) and Bridges et al. (2020).

It should be sensitive to differences in reaction times among participants

Does this mean you are using a between-subject design? Because in general, for within-subject designs (where you are comparing RTs between conditions within the same participants), differences in timing precision of browsers should at most decrease statistical power. In principle, they should not cause a threat to the validity of your experiment.

For between-subject designs, I guess it depends on the effect size of the difference that you are expecting. If this expected difference is in the order of, say, hundreds of ms, slight measurement errors should not do any harm. If, in contrast, the effect that you are measuring is not robust, measurement errors due to browsers differences might be an issue.

In the most extreme case, experiments for which both temporal accuracy and precision (or validity and reliability) are crucial, should not be ran online.

Thus, I might make those variables fixed at first.

How do you mean this? Perhaps this script provided by @Fab might be useful, where you can apparently store information about the browser participants are using (I didn't try it, but it sounds convenient).

• https://forum.cogsci.nl/discussion/comment/22904#Comment_22904

Sorry for not answering your question in a more concrete way, but perhaps this already helps a bit.

Cheers,

Lotje