Chapter
overviews and demonstrations
Learn more about the topics covered by the book and see live demonstrations
of the exercises
Downloads
Download the HTML, CGI/Perl, and image files used in the book
FAQ
Read answers to frequently asked questions about conducting research online
Discussion
forum
Share ideas, scripts, and questions with others on the online forum
Order
the book
Order a copy of the book via the Guilford
Press or Amazon
Resources
and links
Links to programs that may be of interest to online researchers
Home
page
Overview of the book
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Frequently
Asked Questions
Read answers to frequently
asked questions about the book and about conducting research online
Q.
Is this book only for psychologists?
Although
this book was written with a focus on applications to psychological science,
the techniques discussed in this book are relevant to anyone working in
the behavioral or social sciences, including (but not limited to) anthropology,
sociology, political science, and marketing.
Q.
Do I need my own web server in order to conduct research online?
No. In the
book I show you how to acquire access to a server by using a professional
web hosting service. This approach is very easy and, if you're willing
to allow the service to place ads on your web page, you can obtain the
service for free. (For a trivial fee you can have the ads removed.) In
the book I also explain how to setup a personal web server for those readers
who are more adventurous.
Q.
I am having trouble downloading and naming the image files. Specifically,
my computer is renaming the files with an *.jpeg extension instead of
the *.jpg extension.
For some
reason, Windows XP appears to rename the extension of the files that you
download without warning you first. For example, if you download a file
called "image.jpg" from the web, Windows XP will rename the
file "image.jpeg" without telling you. I don't know the best
solution to this inconvenience, but you may try downloading the file and,
once it has been downloaded, rename the file extension manually.
Q.
What is the solution to the "challenge" presented at the very
end of Chapter 7?
At the end
of chapter 7 I ask you to write a program that will process and save the
data for a questionnaire in which a subset of items is randomly presented
from a larger bank of items. I claimed that the solution was fairly simple,
but, truth be told, it took me a bit longer to solve it than I had anticipated.
I've posted below links to the code for two scripts that solve the problem.
The first script, randesteemextra.pl,
is responsible for presenting five randomly selected self-esteem items
from a bank of ten items. The second script, randesteemextra2.pl,
calculates the user's self-esteem score and saves it to a text file. You
can see a demonstration by clicking here: demonstration.
R. Chris Fraley |
http://www.uic.edu/~fraley
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