This is the third post in a series introducing some of the members of the Signal Patterns Scientific Advisory Board.  These leading psychologists and researchers work with Signal Patterns to bring their work to the public in the form of various online applications.

Tom Buchanan is Reader in Psychology at the University of Westminster in London, UK.  His main interests are in the broad areas of personality and social psychology, and how they intersect with the Internet.

He has been using the Internet for research and teaching since the mid 1990s – and learns more about its possibilities every day.  Most of his publications are in the area of online research methodology, and application of online research techniques to important real life issues.

What’s your research focus?

I am generally interested in how people behave ”on the Internet” - for example, there is considerable evidence that levels of self-disclosure are very high in online communication.  I’m interested in the implications such factors have for psychological research conducted via the Internet (e.g. online data collection).  My work has a specific focus on online psychological testing - especially measurement of personality.

What are the applications for your work?

This work has numerous applications - as psychologists increasingly use the Internet for research and applied practice, it becomes ever more important to ensure that such work is methodologically sound.  For example, if you completed a psychometric test online as part of a job application or filled in a depression screening measure on the web, you’d obviously want to make sure those tests worked properly.

What are you reading?

My current reading mainly consists of student essays and papers I am reviewing for publication.  I also read a lot of online material (especially the BBC News website). The last ‘leisure’ book I read was a Stephen King novel.

What are good books for the lay person to understand your area?

Adam Joinson’s 2003 book “Understanding the Psychology of Internet Behaviour: Virtual Worlds, Real Lives“, while being an academic text, is actually quite readable and accessible to non-experts.

How is the internet/online applications impacting your work?

Pretty much all my research, and an increasing amount of my teaching, is conducted via the Internet.

What do you always get asked?  What do your students want to know?

“Can you trust all this Internet data?  Don’t people just lie all the time online?”

There’s a considerable body of evidence that indicates good quality data can be collected online - but also a number of methodological caveats one needs to be aware off.  And no, our research doesn’t suggest people lie more online - quite the opposite.

How would you like to bring your work to the public?

In a number of ways, really.  We need to move beyond the traditional academic journals as an outlet for our findings.  Traditional and new media organisations can be very useful in that. Science blogs and other Web 2.0 platforms are also becoming important (though quality and peer review issues need to be kept in mind).

What’s the biggest misperception of your field?

There are a number of misperceptions that I’ve encountered amongst academic psychologists.  One is that Internet research falls short of the ‘gold standard’ of traditional lab based work.  They are just different tools with different strengths and weaknesses.

Another is that people lie more online.  A third is that if you put a questionnaire or experiment ‘on the Internet,’ then thousands of people will just appear and complete it; it’s not that easy.

Finally, many (if not most) researchers don’t realise that there are important methodological and ethical considerations in online research - you can’t just take an existing paper-and-pencil personality test, for example, stick it online and expect it to work exactly the same. It might, but it might not - and that’s an issue we need to look at.

What’s the ‘holy grail’ for your work?

I wouldn’t necessarily describe this as a holy grail, but I think there is a pressing need to examine the equivalence of online and offline psychological tests, to systematically identify and describe any differences (in terms of variables measured, populations of interest and other key factors) and to explore the mechanisms underlying any such differences.   Not the kind of research that excites people unfortunately!

What’s wrong with psychology?

What’s wrong with psychology? Difficult question - I’m torn between ‘not much’ and ‘a lot.’  Perhaps the profusion of pet theories and applied approaches unsupported by systematic research, and the general lack of a ‘big picture’ or overall orienting framework for understanding human thought, feeling and behaviour.