This chapter explores the promise and pitfalls of using the Internet as a tool to collect data, with a focus on practical and conceptual concerns relevant to social-personality psychologists. It discusses some of the benefits and challenges of collecting data over the Internet, and focuses primarily on using the Internet to recruit participants and collect data. The chapter reviews a practical guidance for implementing online studies. It provides detailed examples of how common study designs within social-personality psychology can be successfully implemented via the Internet. Using an experimental design in an Internet-based study requires translating the random assignment process and the experimental manipulation(s) to a Web-based format. The chapter highlights a few unique options and challenges of Internet-based study design. It also discusses a few but unique ethical concerns which the Internet data collection presents before ending with a discussion on the future opportunities for Internet use in research.

This chapter explores the contemporary methods for conducting research on group phenomena and convinces the reader that investigating something as complex as individual behavior in groups can be stimulating and rewarding. Group processes and outcomes can be, and often have been, studied outside the laboratory using nonexperimental methods. The chapter provides only a basic overview of these methods as they have been applied to the study of group phenomena, primarily by citing some representative examples from the literature. Observational field methods have been divided into two principal types: nonparticipant observation and participant observation. The chapter examines a number of special techniques for analyzing group structure. It also examines a number of methodologies in which some guided form of group interaction has been held to provide a useful context and means for achieving some other goal, such as solving a problem, assessing opinion, generating ideas, and so on.