Individual differences in online research: Comparing lab-based and online administration of a psycholinguistic battery of linguistic and domain-general skills

Experimental psychologists and psycholinguists increasingly turn to online research for data collection, due to the ease of sampling a large number of diverse participants in parallel. Online research has shown promising validity and consistency, but is it suitable for all paradigms? Specifically, is it reliable enough for individual difference research? The current paper reports performance on fifteen tasks from a psycholinguistic individual difference battery, including timed and untimed assessments of linguistic abilities, as well as domain-general skills. From a demographically homogenous sample of Dutch young people, 149 participants took part in the study in the lab and 515 participated online. Our results indicate that there is no reason to assume that participants tested online will underperform compared to lab-based testing, though they highlight the importance of motivation as well as the potential for external help (e.g. through looking up answers) online. Overall, we conclude that there is reason for optimism in the future of online research into individual differences.