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Web Scraping: A Useful Tool to Broaden and Extend Psychological Research
[journal article]
Abstract When people use the Internet, they leave traces of their activities: blog posts, comments, articles, social media posts, etc. These traces represent behavior that psychologists can analyze. A method that makes downloading those sometimes very large datasets feasible is web scraping, which involves w... view more
When people use the Internet, they leave traces of their activities: blog posts, comments, articles, social media posts, etc. These traces represent behavior that psychologists can analyze. A method that makes downloading those sometimes very large datasets feasible is web scraping, which involves writing a program to automatically download specific parts of a website. The obtained data can be used to exploratorily generate new hypotheses, test existing ones, or extend existing research. The present Research Spotlight explains web scraping and discusses the possibilities, limitations as well as ethical and legal challenges associated with the approach.... view less
Keywords
Internet; investigation; ethics; social psychology; behavioral psychology; social media; digital media; data; data capture
Classification
Methods and Techniques of Data Collection and Data Analysis, Statistical Methods, Computer Methods
Interactive, electronic Media
Social Psychology
Free Keywords
Politbarometer 1977-2019 (Partielle Kumulation) (ZA2391 v12.0.0); web scraping; Big Data; internet research ethics
Document language
English
Publication Year
2021
Page/Pages
p. 241-244
Journal
Zeitschrift für Psychologie, 229 (2021) 4
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1027/2151-2604/a000470
ISSN
2151-2604
Status
Published Version; peer reviewed