Using the Internet for psychological research: Personality testing on the World Wide Web

The Internet is increasingly being used as a medium for psychological resea rch. To assess the validity of such efforts, an electronic version of Gange stad & Snyder's (1985) revised self-monitoring questionnaire was placed at a site on the World Wide Web. In all, 963 responses were obtained through t he Internet and these were compared with those from a group of 224 undergra duates who completed a paper-and-pencil version. Comparison of model fit in dices obtained through confirmatory factor analyses indicated that the Inte rnet-mediated version had similar psychometric properties to its convention al equivalent and compared favourably as a measure of self-monitoring. Reas ons for possible superiority of Internet data are discussed. Results suppor t the notion that Web-based personality assessment is possible, but stringe nt validation of test instruments is urged.