Exciting news: I’ve now fully replicated an originally in-lab finding with babies over Zoom (n = 48)! A brief thread on my adventures in online infant testing. 1/10

Before this pandemic, all of my infant data collection took place in the lab. When the pandemic hit, I had to hit pause on infant data collection indefinitely. 2/10

Seeing tweets like these by @jfkominsky gave me hope that I could take my own infant studies online.

https://twitter.com/jfkominsky/status/1255608196296855553
3/10

I ran a quick pilot study in June to see how effects might compare to the lab. Pilot data were really promising, so I decided to run a full sample. 4/10

I was able to collect data from 48 fifteen-month-old infants in just over a month. I’ve never collected data so quickly. This is at least 5 times as fast as what I’m used to, even in the summer. 5/10

I think parents are a lot more open to participating, now that they can do so without commuting to our lab. Babies also seem a lot more comfortable in their homes, and thus, possibly less likely to fuss out. 6/10

(It might also be that parents have fewer things to do outside the home during this pandemic.) 7/10

Had I known I could be collecting data so quickly online, and that effects online might be comparable to effects in-lab, I would’ve pursued online data collection years ago. 8/10

I’m now in the process of trying to replicate other in-lab findings that I had, with infants of other ages, before building on them over Zoom. 9/10

Thanks so much to my labmates, especially @liushari and @AshleyJ_Thomas, for helpful discussions about collecting data online. 10/10

This post got more attention than I'd anticipated. If you're a parent reading this, and you'd like to participate in studies with your children, please visit: https://childrenhelpingscience.com/ 

@helping_science helps to connect parents to a lot of labs doing research on children

For those of you who saw this thread and are now thinking of taking your infant and child studies online, I highly recommend looking at materials that @hyogweon's lab has put together: https://twitter.com/hyogweon/status/1273393555814232066

Hyo's a superstar scientist, and her lab has put together and shared materials that I found really helpful as I was setting up my own Zoom studies. I think the materials are mostly for verbal children, but they're easily adaptable for infants.

And for those of you who are specifically interested in testing infants online, I highly recommend reading a new blog post by @liushari on how she's made infant testing work online, with a focus on violation of expectation studies. https://twitter.com/liushari/status/1291194838700953603

I've benefited so much from talking with Shari about study design and experiments, both pre-pandemic and now that we're navigating new online studies as a lab. She's absolutely brilliant, and I'm excited to learn more about the new projects she's doing as a postdoc!