Scientific (Phone) Applications and Mobile Devices

Surveys are an instrumental way in which researchers and scientists can gather data. With increasing reliance of digital solutions, manual surveys utilizing pen and paper are increasingly rare in the technologically connected world. Previously, we released the PsychVey web application platform to facilitate easy management of surveys for faster, more convenient and secure data collection. In the new PsychVey Ver.2, there is now a new user interface, automated email notification, auto-marking, display of pictures, uploading of documents and an improved search feature. To allow cross-platforms, PsychVey Ver2 has improved mobile-browser compatibility and speed.

The SARS-CoV2 pandemic of year 2020 caused unprecedented disruptions globally. With lockdowns implemented in many countries, scientific research such as biomedical sciences, experienced major disruptions including in the supply chains of research materials.

With the multitude of academic reports published daily, ever-increasing reference formats and styles, it has become cumbersome for academics and researchers to create references and read all relevant publications. To alleviate these problems, the “Antibody & Product Development Lab (APD) Reference App” was created for easy reference search, and citation in different formats by using Optical Character Recognition (OCR) to capture the Digital Object Identifier (DOI) or title of a publication. Following this, users can easily retrieve, browse, and read translated summaries of the articles of interest. Incorporating Natural Language Processing (NLP), the app is available on both Google and Apple app stores with trials available for paid features.

Traditional psychological research relying on the fixed location laboratories and surveys are fraught with limitations. To an extent, these limits contribute to the serious problem of both poor reproducibility and poor ecological validity by constraining the geographical sampling of participant, affecting convenience and willingness. While this has been alleviated with the Internet revolution bringing along on-line surveys, the more recent Smartphone and microcontroller kit revolutions promise to break down the limitations even further. Drawing from examples of these revolutions in related disciplines, microcontroller kit revolutions can improve convenience and administration of psychological research, both survey-based and experimental.

Changes in technology have increased our capacity to interface with existing tools and measures in social sciences and healthcare research. Demands for increased accessibility and preference for flexibility in data collection have resulted in an influx of technological innovations and adaptations of existing tools. Yet, the usability of digital adaptations of self-reported measures have not been well studied. This research investigated the comparability and reliability of the empirically-validated Multi-System Model of Resilience Inventory through two modalities: an online survey platform, and a digital mobile application. User experiences of the mobile application in research was also studied. Implications of the findings for the use of digital applications in research in healthcare and social sciences are discussed.