Off-task behaviours, such as media multitasking, are frequent in social science experiments and are especially common during online data collection. Such off-task behaviour can affect the quality of research data, making it crucial to understand the nature of this behaviour and to account for its influences.
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Acknowledgements
This work was made possible by a Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) Discovery Grant awarded to D.S., an NSERC Post-graduate Scholarship awarded to A.C.D. and an NSERC Post-Doctoral Fellowship awarded to E.J.P. We thank members of the Vision and Attention lab for contributing to research and discussions on online off-task behaviours in recent years.
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Drody, A.C., Pereira, E.J. & Smilek, D. The importance of accounting for off-task behaviours during data collection. Nat Hum Behav 7, 1234–1236 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-023-01653-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-023-01653-2