Researching Real-World Web Use with Roxy: Collecting Observational Web Data with Informed Consent

Outside of a laboratory environment, it has been difficult for researchers to collect both behavioral and self-reported Web use data from the same participants. To address this challenge, we created Roxy, which is software that collects real-world Web-use data with participants' informed consent. Roxy gathers Web log data as well as the text and HTML code of each page visited by participants. In this workbench note, we describe Roxy's data-gathering capabilities and search functions, then illustrate how we used the software in a multimethod study. The use case examines selective exposure to political communication during the November 2010 U.S. general election campaign.

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