Hello there fellow online research enthusiasts,

This website is intended to be the web “homebase” of the Qualtrics Reaction Time Engine (QRTE for short). We hope this website will be your one-stop shop for everything QRTE-related. On this website, we hope to keep track of all publications made with the Engine and post tutorials and examples of both beginner and advanced techniques alike. Next to that, of course, we will provide the necessary components (the .js file and the parser) for you to successfully run your own experiments online.

The goal we had in mind when creating the Engine was to provide a highly reliable and precise method and framework for creating and running online behavioural research experiments. We combined the ease of use of the online survey platform Qualtrics (which allows free trial accounts) with new HTML5 techniques that allow for very precise timing of stimuli in JavaScript. And all that’s required to unlock these features in Qualtrics is to copy and paste a bunch of JavaScript/CSS code in a window and stick to a certain design pattern!

Our paper has been accepted for publication in the journal Behavior Research Methods and reports three experiments that, in combination with Amazon’s Mechanical Turk, show the possibilities of online experimentation. With the last of those three experiments showing that the engine can even be used to study subliminal priming!

So what are you waiting for? Get started now!

– The QRTE Team

Barnhoorn, J., Haasnoot, E., Bocanegra, B.R., & van Steenbergen, H. (2014). QRTEngine: An easy solution for running online reaction time experiments using Qualtrics. Behavior Research Methods. PDF