[AUDITORY] Input requested: ASA P&P Task Force on Remote Testing

[Chris Stecker <cstecker@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Understandably, there has been much recent interest and activity related to remote testing for auditory and other perceptual experiments both on this list and broadly throughout the research community. I have been following the discussions here with great interest, in part because of my involvement with the Acoustical Society of America Technical Committee on Psychological and Physiological Acoustics (ASA P&P). At our May meeting, ASA P&P launched a Task Force on Remote Testing. Although motivated by concerns about conducting research during a pandemic, this effort is intended to consider remote testing very broadly as it relates to future research across diverse research goals and participant populations. I’m writing to let you know about this effort and to solicit your input. 

The Task Force has been meeting regularly and making significant progress toward the following broad goals:

1) Identify and describe the major challenges of remote testing, discuss the scientific and technical issues which investigators need to consider, and (ultimately) identify best practices for remote testing.

2) Identify and compare the capabilities of various approaches to remote testing, including broad strategies as well as specific platforms for remote testing. Examples include fully remote / browser-based research platforms as well as “take-home” hardware-based solutions. 

3) Develop an online resource to share this information with the research community. 

We have made significant progress in each of these areas. A wiki-based webpage is currently under development, which will be made broadly available in the near future (at that time I will post an announcement to this list). It will contain discussions of issues and best practices and links to other resources. Structured information about platform capabilities will be provided, and an online survey tool has been developed to capture new information as platforms grow. We are also soliciting descriptions of existing projects as a way to help identify challenges, opportunities, and recommendations. If you are involved in such a project, we would love to hear about it! 

To facilitate broader input, I’d like to invite you to complete a brief survey which the Task Force developed to query investigators about their own remote-testing activities, experiences (positive and negative), and recommendations. We hope that investigators will also use this survey to help guide the Task Force consider all potentially relevant concerns and resources. 

Link to Survey on Remote Testing “State of the Science":  https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/8P568RC

If you have anything to share, whether it’s a project description, a review of a platform you have used, or just a bit of advice, please visit the survey. Feel free to respond to any or all of the prompts, and let us know if we can post your comments to the Remote-Testing Wiki. 

Thanks for your help, and please don’t hesitate to reach out directly if you have other questions or concerns.

Chris Stecker
Chair, ASA P&P Task Force on Remote Testing