1-068 - Online data collection: Challenges and solutions to 21st century data dilemmas

Session Type: Paper Symposium

Integrative Statement

As computer use becomes ubiquitous, incorporating online methods for collecting data is increasingly attractive to researchers. Advantages of such techniques include increased sample size for both typical and clinical populations, reductions in data entry error, missing data, and expense of data collection, and greater convenience for both researchers and participants. Challenges faced by researchers include equating computer-based assessment tools to traditional paper-pencil methods, resolving issues of data integrity, addressing limitations of timing accuracy across devices and operating systems, and clarifying communication with participants, among others. Seamless and efficient accrual of data previously requiring tedious chart review and/or researcher time offers the potential for a more thorough understanding of samples and conditions, but careful consideration of practicalities and pitfalls is necessary to ensure the accuracy of data collected. The caveat “garbage in-garbage out” applies. This symposium presents data from samples of children, young adults, and caregivers -including those from challenging clinical populations - and reviews considerations for computer-based data collection; challenges to accurate assessment; comparisons of online to paper-pencil measures across multiple dimensions such as completeness, reliability, sensitivity, and specificity; and design of online data collection methods for a variety of populations and conditions. Discussion will also review web-hosting options, IRB considerations, survey design, and methods to improve data accuracy. Overall, these data suggest that moving to online data collection has the potential to yield reliable and fruitful data, permitting more efficient and thorough collection of information from larger and more diverse samples than has been traditionally possible.

Sub Unit

• Methods, History, Theory

Chair

• Lisa Jacobson, Kennedy Krieger Institute

Individual Presentations

• Electronic data capture systems: You get what you ask for? - Presenting Author: Mark McCurdy, Drexel University; T. Andrew Zabel, Kennedy Krieger Institute; Brian P Daly, Drexel University

• Psychometric properties of caregiver-report youth behavior ratings administered online - Presenting Author: Alison E. Pritchard, Kennedy Krieger Institute/ Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine; Taylor A. Koriakin, Kennedy Krieger Institute; Erin Jones, Kennedy Krieger Institute; Lisa Jacobson, Kennedy Krieger Institute

• Factors affecting computer-based data collection: Timing accuracy, operating system, and device type - Presenting Author: Philip Schatz, Saint Joseph's University