What is it about?
People's response times when answering online survey questions closely matched scores on a standard processing speed test, and showed similar patterns across different groups. This suggests that survey response times could provide researchers with an approximation of processing speed.
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Why is it important?
Survey response times may provide a simple digital biomarker of processing speed using information that online surveys already collect.
Perspectives
This work is an example of our paradata group's belief that, beyond what people respond to surveys, how they respond can yield additional information about individuals such as insights on their mental health, effort in responding, and cognitive performance (which was the focus here). To me this paper was a milestone in that it indicated that the epidemiology audience (at least, the subset that did the review) believed us.
Raymond Hernandez
University of Southern California
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Evidence supports the validity and reliability of response times from a brief survey as a digital biomarker for processing speed in a large panel study, American Journal of Epidemiology, January 2025, Oxford University Press (OUP),
DOI: 10.1093/aje/kwae478.
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