Inquisit 3 Web

Inquisit 3 Web enables you to administer studies over the web so that subjects can contribute psychological data from their homes, dorms, offices, and internet cafes. With just a few mouse clicks, you can publish your study online and begin collecting data over the web.

Reach more diverse subject populations

Inquisit 3 Web expands your subject pool by allowing participants to perform psychological tests and experiment at a time and location of their convenience. Web studies are a great option for reaching populations who cannot come into the lab due to geographic location, scheduling conflicts, or anxiety. (Note - Inquisit currently runs on Windows only. It does not yet run on Macs.)

Unlimited numbers of participants

With a single Inquisit 3 web license, you can publish a study online and gather data from an unlimited number of participants simultaneously or in sequence. Gather as much data as you'd like - there are no charges per data file. This makes Inquisit very cost effective for both internet research and mass testing sessions in class rooms and large labs.

Point and click web deployment

Inquisit 3 Web includes an easy to use control panel for deploying experiments online. No knowledge of web server administration is necessary. The web license includes free hosting on millisecond.com, or you can optionally host experiments on your own web server. To access your data, simply login to you millisecond account, browse to your data files, and select which files to download. The data are saved as tab-delimited text that can be loaded into any analysis package (e.g., SPSS, Excel).

How accurate is timing over the web?

When a participant browses to the experiment launch page and clicks "Start", the engine is downloaded and runs locally on the participant's machine, where it has access to all of the high-peformance native Windows components it needs to achieve millisecond precision timing. In fact, Inquisit 3 Web uses exactly the same powerful and fast engine that Inquisit 3 desktop uses. The engine is only 700k compressed (about the size of an iPhone picture), so it take just a few seconds to download. We've wrapped the engine in several web technologies that provide a smooth download experience across a wide variety of web browsers.

Variability in client computers

One consequence of running web experiments is that web client PCs vary in processing speed. Inquisit is a lightweight, efficient engine that performs well on even the slowest computers still in use today.

Besides processing speed, computer graphic displays may vary in both display resolution and vertical refresh rate (i.e., how quickly the screen repaints itself). To control for different display sizes, Inquisit allows you to define the size and layout of visual stimuli as a percentage of the screen size, so the display scales appropriately given the size of the monitor. Although Inquisit cannot control the vertical refresh rate of the monitor, Inquisit can detect the parameters of the display system and be configured to either screen participants whose hardware doesn't meet standards, or record the refresh rate to the data file so it can be treated as an independent variable. 

Where can I try an Inquisit 3 Web experiment?

To see what it's like to participate in an Inquisit web experiment, we have dozens of measures available online in the Millisecond task library. Just click the measure you are interested in, and then click the "View Demo" link on the home page for that measure. For example, you can test our IAT scripts by clicking any of the "View Demo" links on our IAT page.

Where can I get Inquisit 3 Web?

The first step is to download the free trial of Inquisit 3 Desktop from our download page. Inquisit 3 Desktop provides the tools for editing, testing, and debugging your experiment scripts. You can download scripts from our task library or create your own. Once your script is running, you can purchase an Inquisit 3 license, login to your account, and use the control panel to upload the script and any required media (e.g., pictures, sounds, videos). Your experiment will be published online and is ready for data collection. The rest of the tools for Inquisit 3 Web Edition are offered as services on our web site, so there is nothing more you need to download.  To see Inquisit 3 Web Edition in action, check out our demos.

Can I evaluate Inquisit 3 Web?

Follow this link for instructions on evaluating Inquisit 3 Web. Note that without a license, you can run experiments online but the data will not be saved. You can use the free trial of Inquisit 3 Desktop to see how data are saved since the format is identical to that of Inquisit 3 Web.

Licensing and pricing for Inquisit 3 Web

We offer a number of licensing options for Inquisit 3 Web that vary in the length of time for data collection. Click here for licensing details and pricing.