The same study conducted via regular mail would be costly, time-consuming and result in a relatively small sample. But within a few days of sending out his e-mail notes, Birnbaum had several hundred responses. Along with obtaining larger sample sizes through the Web, online research saves money, a major advantage to researchers at small colleges and universities, says Hanover College's Krantz. Not only do researchers save on laboratory space, and printing of study materials, but labor costs are reduced because researchers don't need to hire lab assistants to man their labs or input data. On average, they post a study a week devoted to research on judgment and decision-making.
Baron monitors the site to see if people understand the study questions.
If they don't, he pulls the study, discards the data and makes changes at little cost of money or time. And he draws so many participants, it's easy to run a study over and over. In fact, now that his site is well-known, he reaches his goal of 50 participants per study within three hours. Of course, if an incentive is too good, some people may come back many times. If he omitted all but the first set of data from each computer, he found it made no difference to his results.