Program Highlights | Keynote Speaker | Schedule | Sponsor | Past Conferences | Contact

Step into the future of online research

At this virtual event, hosted by CloudResearch, we promise to bring together innovative minds from across the research spectrum for an enriching and enlightening experience. Our goal is to foster collaboration, share knowledge, and inspire attendees with best practices in online research through a blend of illuminating talks, interactive workshops, and high-quality networking opportunities. IIOR also offers valuable insights into CloudResearch’s products, including Connect, Prime Panels, Managed Research, and Sentry.




Program Highlights

  • Keynote address by Dr. Sean Westwood, Associate Professor in the Department of Government at Dartmouth College and Director of the Polarization Research Lab
  • Deep dive into data quality led by renowned experts
  • An exploration of research complexities across different study types
  • Meet high-quality participants from Connect and learn from their firsthand experiences
  • Hear from our CloudResearch grant recipients and get inspired by their work

A unique feature of the Innovations in Online Research conference is our focus on interactivity. We encourage attendees to actively engage in Q&A sessions, panel discussions, and breakout groups to discuss key learning points and challenges they face in their own research.


Keynote Speaker: Dr. Sean Westwood

Dr. Sean Westwood is an Associate Professor in the Department of Government at Dartmouth College and Director of the Polarization Research Lab. Dr. Westwood’s main area of research is political behavior and public opinion, specifically focusing on how partisanship and information from political elites affect the behavior of citizens. His keynote address will debunk the perceived high support for politically motivated violence in America, demonstrating through extensive survey experiments that such support is notably low due to factors such as respondent disengagement and ambiguous survey questions. 

Dr. Westwood’s work has received widespread recognition, being covered by major outlets including The New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Slate, Vox, Foreign Affairs, New Republic, Newsweek, ABC, CBS, CNN, Fortune, Financial Times, Bloomberg, NPR, New York Magazine, and USA Today, among others. He also has a rich academic publication record. Some of his notable publications include The Inseparability of Race and Partisanship in the United States in Political Behavior, Projecting Confidence: How the Probabilistic Horserace Confuses and Demobilizes the Public in the Journal of Politics, and Fear and Loathing Across Party Lines: New Evidence on Group Polarization in the American Journal of Political Science.  

Through his work, Dr. Westwood plays a pivotal role in understanding and addressing the growing polarization in America’s political landscape. 

Schedule*

From Perception to Reality: Measuring Rare Attitudes in U.S. Political Violence 

Political scientists, pundits, and citizens worry that America is entering a new period of violent partisan conflict. Provocative survey data show that a large share of Americans (between 8% and 40%) support politically motivated violence. Yet, despite media attention, political violence is rare, amounting to a little more than 1% of violent hate crimes in the United States. 

In this insightful keynote address, Dr. Sean Westwood will present data from four extensive online survey experiments involving nearly 5,000 participants to reconcile these seemingly conflicting facts. As Dr. Westwood will demonstrate, respondent disengagement, random responding, and ambiguous survey questions drastically overinflate the support for partisan violence. In fact, when using proper data quality measures, support for partisan violence is vanishingly low, and nearly all respondents support criminally charging suspects who commit acts of political violence. These findings suggest that although recent acts of political violence dominate the news, they do not portend a new era of violent conflict. 

For researchers across all fields, this keynote promises to be an essential learning experience. Join us as we untangle this complex issue, addressing the disparity between perception and reality. Gain invaluable insights into the critical role of data quality in social science research and its effects on public opinion and policy. 

Take a quick break and a sip of coffee! 🙂 ☕️

Delve into the intricacies of data quality with our expert panel including Dr. Sara Jaeger, Dr. Catherine Marshall, Dr. Leib Litman, and Dr. Aaron Moss in a 1.5-hour-long interactive session. The panel will discuss pivotal questions such as measurement methods for data quality, the comparison of attention checks vs digital fingerprinting, and more. Following the panel discussion, attendees will participate in breakout sessions to discuss key takeaways, disagreements, current challenges, and potential strategies for enhancing data quality. The session will conclude with a lively discussion and open Q&A, providing an opportunity to share insights from the breakouts and field additional questions.

Sara Jaeger

Editor-in-Chief for Food Quality and Preference

Catherine Marshall

Adjunct Professor at Texas A&M University

Leib Litman

Co-founder and Chief Research Officer at CloudResearch

Aaron Moss

Senior Research Scientist at CloudResearch

Take a quick break and a second sip of coffee! 🙂 ☕️

Experience first-hand insights from participants in a 30-minute panel discussion. We’ll be bringing together 3-5 high-quality participants from the Connect platform to voice their experiences, likes, and dislikes about using the platform and participating in studies. The session will open up for a Q&A, offering attendees a unique opportunity to directly engage with, and learn from, the experiences of the participants themselves.

The panel will be moderated by Caitlin Harrington, a staff writer at WIRED who covers the intersection of technology, corporate practices, and workers’ rights, with a keen focus on the societal implications of tech giants’ business decisions. One of Harrrington’s latest articles is a deep dive into the way ChatGPT is reshaping crowd work

Caitlin Harrington

Staff Writer, WIRED
Before coming to WIRED as a research fellow, Harrington worked as an editorial fellow at San Francisco magazine and as a certified medical dosimetrist in the radiation oncology field. She earned her bachelor’s degree in English from Boston University and lives in San Francisco.

That is one jam-packed morning! Let’s pause and reflect over lunch (BYOL). 

Unravel the complexities of research design in our ‘Navigating Research Complexity’ session. The session will commence with a 30-minute overview, followed by an hour-long breakout with a choice between three sessions: Dyadic studies, Longitudinal + Clinical studies, or Qualitative studies. Each session will delve into examples, challenges, and best practices. Attendees will regroup for a Q&A, promoting the exchange of insights and collaborative problem-solving.

Dyadic Studies: This breakout session focuses on collecting dyadic or group data online in diverse contexts including menopausal women and their partners (Yating Yang), how to study conversations online (Mike Yeomans), the use of the Online Coalition Game for studying politics (Anabela Cantiani), and the use of ChatPlat for studying political polarization (Trevor Spelman)

Yating Yang

PhD student at University of Texas at Austin

Michael Yeomans

Assistant Professor in Strategy and Organisational Behaviour at Imperial College Business School

Anabela Cantiani

PhD candidate at the Social Psychology department of Tilburg University

Trevor Spelman

Doctoral Candidate, Northwestern University Kellogg School of Management

Longitudinal Studies and Clinical Samples: This session explores how to sample patients for longitudinal health behavior studies (Dr. Laura Downey), using a prospective cohort design to study shifts in risk perception regarding COVID-19 (Soyeon Choi), collecting online data for eating disorders research (Dr. Sarah Weinberger-Litman), and using audio recordings to study suicidality among veterans (Dr. Yosef Sokol).  

Dr. Laura Downey

Lecturer in the Daniels School of Business at Purdue University

Soyeon Choi

Doctoral Student at the University of Michigan

Dr. Sarah Weinberger-Litman

Professor of Psychology at Marymount Manhattan College and Co-Director of the Eating Disorders Program at Achieve Behavioral Health

Dr. Yosef Sokol

Research Health Science Specialist at Veteran Affairs and Assistant Professor of Psychology at Touro University

Qualitative Research Online: In this session, the connection between medical mistrust and lung cancer screening inequities in the US is explored through online interviews and focus groups with a diverse audience (Dr. Jennifer Richmond). The subsequent talk addresses challenges posed by AI tools, such as ChatGPT, in online qualitative research and the importance of clear guidelines to prevent unauthorized AI usage (Dr. Leib Litman). The final talk highlights the method of accessing rare patient populations online, specifically chronic refractory migraine sufferers (Dr. Zohn Rosen).

Dr. Jennifer Richmond

Assistant Professor of Social Sciences and Health Policy, Wake Forest University School of Medicine

Dr. Leib Litman

Co-founder and Chief Research Officer at CloudResearch

Dr. Zohn Rosen

Lecturer, Department of Health Policy & Management, Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University

One last sip of coffee! 🙂 ☕️

Join us for a ‘CloudResearch Deep Dive’, a comprehensive 1-hour session designed to help you gain a deeper understanding of our platforms. The session kicks off with a 30-minute demo of our flagship services – Connect, Prime Panels, and Managed Research, offering a glimpse into their advanced capabilities. Following the demo, we will open the floor for a 30-minute interactive Q&A session, providing attendees with the opportunity to dive deeper into the specifics of these services.

Charles Jamerlan

Senior Software Engineer at CloudResearch

Blake Wardrop

Project Manager at CloudResearch

Cheskie Rosenzweig

Senior Research and Product Scientist at CloudResearch

Shimmy Krumholtz

Senior Client Manager at CloudResearch

Meet and interact with our esteemed past and present Grant Recipients. This session will provide an opportunity to gain insights from the journeys of successful grantees, understanding their challenges, strategies, and their innovative research work. It’s a chance to connect, learn, and maybe even be inspired for your own future grant applications.

2023 Grant Recipients

Ashley Sylvara: Examining the Faking Resistance of an Artificial Intelligence Personality Assessment Chatbot

Doctoral Student at Kansas State University

Benjamin Kaveladze: A Megastudy of Single-Session Interventions for Mental Health

Graduate Student at the University of California, Irvine

Brad Huang: Unlocking Creativity with Artificial Intelligence: Experimental Evidence from ChatGPT on the Goldilocks (Curvilinear) Effect of Human–AI Collaboration

Doctoral Student at the University of British Columbia

Kiana Sabugo: Unplanned thoughts and conscious reflection: A novel approach to manipulating perceptions of free will

Research Assistant at UC Santa Barbara

Paul-Richard McCullough: Can AI Chat Bots Replace Survey Samples: A First Step

President of MACRO Consulting

2022 Grant Recipients

Yefim Roth: Attention! Do we really need attention tests?

Senior Lecturer at the University of Haifa

Asli Ceren Cinar: Who benefits from perceived masculinity? A visual survey experiment

Doctoral Candidate at the London School of Economics

Gilad Feldman: Reference points and decision-making: Impact of status quo and defaults in a conceptual replication and extensions Registered Report of Dinner et al. (2011)

Assistant Professor at the University of Hong Kong

Sampling Beyond WEIRD: Attentiveness, Honesty, Reliability, and Overall Quality in Non-Western Research Participants
Besample, a new platform for behavioral research in non-WEIRD populations, will share results of internal quality assessment of 250,000 research participants from Africa, Asia, Latin America, and Eastern Europe, along with tips on collecting data in non-Western countries and a special small grant program for researchers willing to go beyond WEIRD.

Speakers

Elena Brandt

Besample CEO & Founder

Ksenia Zinder

Data Scientist, Besample

Wind down at our Social Event. This will be the perfect opportunity to discuss main takeaways from the event, network with fellow attendees, and engage in an open Q&A. Share your thoughts and experiences from the conference, and perhaps spark insightful discussions with other passionate professionals.

*Schedule is subject to change

Besample Logo

Meet our sponsor Besample: a brand-new data collection platform for researching beyond the West. Recall that classic estimation that 96% of all psychology findings were based on WEIRD research populations (Henrich et al., 2010)? Besample was created to change this by giving scholars quick, easy, and affordable online access to quality research participants from 42 diverse countries, such as Uzbekistan, Kenya, Colombia, or Bangladesh. Don’t miss out on grant opportunities! Besample supports scholars in their effort to go beyond WEIRD. Are you a graduate student, postdoc, or young faculty? Apply for a grant of up to $250 to collect your first international dataset.

Registration for the 2023 IIOR conference is now closed.

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Past Conferences

Recordings from the 2023 IIOR conference will be available in the upcoming weeks. Stay tuned!

We have hosted the Innovations in Online Research Conference for three consecutive years! If you missed the past conferences, or would like a refresher before our 2023 conference, you can view recordings from past conferences here:

  • 2022
  • 2021
    • Dr. Jesse Chandler gave a keynote on “The Fulfilled and Unfulfilled Promises of Amazon Mechanical Turk.” Anyone who’s used MTurk will enjoy this look at its rise and current status
    • During our Careers in Industry Panel, Kate Rogers (Zillow) and Ryne Sherman (Hogan Assessments) spoke about work in industry. Among their tips for people interested in industry were internships, making your resume skills-oriented, and not underestimating yourself!
    • At the CloudResearch Grant Awards Ceremony, we awarded $10K in research grants and celebrated the winners of our contest—Art Marsden of Syracuse University, Michiel Spapé of University of Helsinki, Nick Byrd of Stevens Institute of Technology, and Megan Burns of NYU. Learn more about their research projects.
    • 34 amazing talks were shared related to online research and innovation. Talks ranged from data quality, to video interviews, new online methods, ethics, polling, social media recruitment, research during COVID, and longitudinal studies.

Contact Us

For more information about the 2023 Innovations in Online Research (IIOR) Conference, or any related queries, we’re here to help! Email Rachel Hartman, our Director of Academic Operations.

We look forward to hearing from you and hope to see you at the conference!