Experiments in the browser
Procedure, timing and compliance when the participant’s browser is the laboratory.
- Open Lab · Behavior Research Methods, 2022
- Noncompliance with online mood inductions · Heliyon, 2019
Psychological methods · University of Konstanz
Measurement outside the laboratory
Psychological data are increasingly collected in web browsers, on participants’ own smartphones and at moments defined by the participant’s situation. Each of these steps gains ecological validity and gives up some experimental control. This research asks which part of that control is lost at each step, and how it can be measured, restored or taken into account in the analysis.
Three lines of research
Experience in daily life
Scheduling, triggering and planning experience-sampling studies on participants’ own phones.
- Samply · Behavior Research Methods, 2021
- Geofencing · Behavior Research Methods, 2024
- Well-being during COVID-19 · PLOS ONE, 2023
Smartphones as instruments
Delivering stimuli to phones in real time and recording responses there.
- Samply Stream API · Behavior Research Methods, 2025
- Misinformation under time constraint · Scientific Reports, 2026
- SMAAT · JMIR Formative Research, 2026
Across the three lines of research the question is the same: which part of experimental control is lost at each step from the laboratory to the browser, the smartphone and real-time events, and how it can be measured, restored or taken into account in the analysis.
Ongoing work extends the question to data quality when online participants may be AI agents, and to the measurement properties of smartphone sensors.
Software
- Open Lab* online experiments built with lab.js
- Samply notifications for experience sampling
- SMAAT* experience sampling and mobile sensing
- ESM Power & Design Planner power analysis by simulation
- All software
* Open Lab and SMAAT are operated by Open Lab Online UG (haftungsbeschränkt). Yury Shevchenko develops both platforms, which are available for research use with free and paid tiers, and may benefit financially from their institutional use.
Recent papers as first author
- Shevchenko, Y., & Hong, H. (2026). Sensor-based mobile app for assessment and tracking (SMAAT): Cross-sectional usability study. JMIR Formative Research, 10, e98984. https://doi.org/10.2196/98984
- Shevchenko, Y., Buchanan, T., & Reips, U.-D. (2026). AI-supported real-time news evaluation reveals effects of time constraint on misinformation discernment. Scientific Reports, 16, 6362. Correction: Scientific Reports, 16, 9546. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-026-39555-8
- Shevchenko, Y., & Reips, U.-D. (2025). Samply Stream API: The AI-enhanced method for real-time event data streaming. Behavior Research Methods, 57(4), 119. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13428-025-02634-1
Upcoming
- What AI agents do in online behavioral tasks—and what this means for detecting them