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OXLab - Oxford eXperimental Laboratory, established in October 2006
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Motivation and Background
The massive growth in internet-mediated interactions between societies, governments and commercial organisations of all kinds creates a concurrent need for innovative methods to research online activity.
Laboratory-based experiments where subjects are brought in and incentivized (via cash payments) to participate in games or information-seeking tasks on networked computers are an excellent way to develop such methodologies. Such laboratories have been used by experimental economists for some time, but the great expansion in online social and commerical activity means that as well as being more central to Economics research they have growing utility across other academic disciplines, particularly sociology, computer science and political science.
Key Research Strands
News +++ News +++ News
April 2009:
Experiment to Investigate the Logic of Collective Action - Findings from this quasi-field experiment to investigate the logic of collective action have been presented at conferences in Oxford (OII - Berkman Internet & Democracy Workshop), Manchester (PSA conference) and Athens (WebSci'09 - Web Science conference).
Download the short version of the paper.
August/September 2008:
New Experiment to Investigate the Logic of Collective Action -
The purpose of this experiment is to test empirically how certain aspects of internet-based communication affect collective action decisions. Specifically, we want to examine the effect of providing internet users with real-time information about other people's participatory actions and preferences.
Download the experiment description.
July 2008:
The recent ad campaign has seen a rise in the OXlab participant database: Currently there are about 1.500 people registered.
May 2008:
We are currently running a new campaign to recruit more volunteers, using the ad below:
3rd to 5th October 2007
OXLab has been at Freshers' Fair 2007 of Oxford University Students Union to present our work and recruit participants for experiments.
17th May 2007
The Oxford Internet Insitute together with the Said Business School held a networking event for experimental researchers. This meeting, jointly organised by Helen Margetts and Nir Vulkan, was intended to bring together researchers from different disciplines across the University with an interest in conducting laboratory-based computer experiments.
Building on OXLab with its database of about 800 volunteers, the aim was to develop ideas for common research projects that could eventually result in a dedicated experimental computer lab for Social Science research at Oxford University. There was broad support among the attendees for such an endeavour that could benefit not only the Oxford Social Science research community but also the University as a whole by attracting experimental researchers to Oxford as well as providing valuable training resources for students. The collaboration is ongoing.
Laboratory Website and Participation
Experiments are being held throughout the year and a database has been established at http://oxlab.oii.ox.ac.uk, where anyone interested in participating may sign up (participation in experiments is paid!).
Funding
This project has been funded by Oxford University Press' Fell Fund to establish the potential for building such a capacity at Oxford and to pilot the methodology and its application in two key disciplines, Economics and Political Science.
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