Conduct Research

The Behavioral Lab has dedicated lab space for experimental research, including four interview rooms, five computer labs with several computer stations in each lab, two rooms with eye-tracking and psychophysiology technology, and a large room that can be used with our virtual reality setup.

Behavioral Lab staff can build, edit, and troubleshoot Qualtrics surveys for faculty. They also provide troubleshooting support to doctoral students.

The lab has a wide array of research software.

Qualtrics is the lab’s primary web-based survey tool. It enables the incorporation of pictures, audio, and video clips.

Qualtrics SMS allows researchers to quickly and easily reach participants by sending them short surveys through SMS.

Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC) is an analysis software program that codes text for over 70 different dimensions, including positive/negative emotions, self-references, and causal words.

MATLAB is a high-level language and interactive environment for numerical computation, visualization, and programming.

DirectRT is Empirisoft’s reaction-time software.

Inquisit, by Millisecond, is a web-based reaction-time program.

If your study requires other software, please contact Lab Director Nick Hall.

The Tobii eye-tracking suite includes the equipment and software needed to capture and analyze eye movements in the lab or the field.

Introductory Videos

Conceptual Introduction to Eye Tracking

Eye Tracking for Qualitative and Quantitative Analysis

Eye-Tracking Experimental Design and Study Methodology

Marketing, Market Research Applications

Dynamic, Video Stimuli

Scientific Research – Pupil Dilation in Eye Tracking

Scientific Research – Analysis of Eye-Tracking Data of Variable Quality

Scientific Research – Face and Scene Perception

BioNomadix Wireless Respiration & ECG amplifiers and BioNomadix PPG and EDA amplifiers enable the measurement of respiration, electrocardiogram (ECG), blood volume pulse (BVP), and electrodermal activity (EDA).

The lab also possesses Vernier Hand Dynamometers, which measure handgrip and calculate grip strength, pinch strength, etc.

The lab can collect and store saliva in a medical-grade freezer. Samples are then shipped to an off-site laboratory for analysis.

The Sona Stanford Community Pool supports both in-person laboratory experiments and online surveys. It consists of Stanford affiliates with a Stanford email address, including undergraduates (~55%), graduate students (~25%), and Stanford staff (~20%).

Participants also know this program as the Alumni Research Experience Program; it includes a broad spectrum of Stanford alumni, from recent graduates to those in their 70s and 80s. The B-Lab recruits through periodic advertisements in the Stanford Alumni Association newsletter, which is emailed to alumni a few times per year. For a more homogeneous sample with broader age representation, researchers may find it useful to run a study across both the Alumni Pool and the Stanford Community Pool.

Prolific is a user-friendly platform that provides access to high-quality, cost-effective online research participants. Designed with academic researchers in mind, Prolific maintains a responsive and reliable participant pool. Tens of thousands of panelists are pre-screened across more than 100 demographic and lifestyle criteria. Researchers can explore available qualifications and participant counts using Prolific’s Audience Checker tool.

CloudResearch provides a suite of online subject pools and tools that faculty and students can access through the Behavioral Lab.

Connect provides a proprietary subject pool that can be sourced through an easily accessible DIY user interface.

MTurk Toolkit connects directly to the Behavioral Lab’s Amazon Mechanical Turk account. Its intuitive user interface provides greater flexibility than using Amazon’s platform directly. Participants come from Amazon, not CloudResearch.

Prime Panels connects to nearly 100 other online subject panel providers, ideal for very large samples (over 5,000) or hard-to-find samples. However, the quality of this sample is typically lower than Connect and Prolific.

BeSample provides access to international (non-U.S.) participant samples, making it a strong option for cross-cultural research. The platform offers a relatively user-friendly, DIY interface for standard studies. As a newer company, more complex study designs, such as longitudinal studies or projects requiring cross-sectional demographics, may need to be coordinated through a service representative. Data quality can vary in some developing-country samples, but this trade-off is outweighed by the value of reaching populations that have historically been difficult to access.

Amazon Mechanical Turk participants can be provisioned through the MTurk Toolkit service by CloudResearch. See “CloudResearch Services” above.

Foothill Community College students can be recruited for surveys through an application to the Institute for Research in the Social Sciences. Applications must be submitted before the academic quarter you plan to conduct your project.