Isolated Sandbox Environment Architecture for Running Cognitive Psychological Experiments in Web Platforms

Abstract

Web surveys are an integral part of the feedback of Internet services, a research tool for respondents, including in the field of health and psychology. Web technologies allow conducting research on large samples. For mental health, an important metric is reaction time in cognitive tests and in answering questions. The use of mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets has increased markedly in web surveys, so the impact of device types and operating systems needs to be investigated. This article proposes an architectural solution aimed at reducing the effect of device variability on the results of cognitive psychological experiments. An experiment was carried out to formulate the requirements for software and hardware. Three groups of 1000 respondents were considered, corresponding to three types of computers and operating systems: Mobile Device, Legacy PC, and Modern PC. The results obtained showed a slight bias in the estimates for each group. It is noticed that the error for a group of devices differs both upward and downward for various tasks in a psychological experiment. Thus, for cognitive tests, in which the reaction time is critical, an architectural solution was synthesized for conducting psychological research in a web browser. The proposed architectural solution considers the characteristics of the device used by participants to undergo research in the web platform and allows to restrict access from devices that do not meet the specified criteria.