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The importance of accounting for off-task behaviours during data collection

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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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Author notes

  1. These authors contributed equally: Allison C. Drody, Effie J. Pereira.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada

    Allison C. Drody, Effie J. Pereira & Daniel Smilek

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  1. Allison C. Drody
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  2. Effie J. Pereira
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  3. Daniel Smilek
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Correspondence to Allison C. Drody.

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The authors declare no competing interests.

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Nature Human Behaviour thanks David Rothschild and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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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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