How PsyNet partnered with Cint to reach participants across 60 countries for behavioral research

Introduction

Dr Nori Jacoby is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology at Cornell University and has previously worked at the Max Planck Institute. 

During his tenure at the Max Planck Institute, Dr Jacoby co-founded PsyNet, an open-source not-for-profit platform designed for running advanced behavioral experiments that range from adaptive psychophysics to simulated cultural evolution. 

The platform aims to enable researchers to implement and deploy experiments as efficiently as possible, while placing minimal constraints on the complexity of the experiment design. 

Challenge

Dr Jacoby needed a tech partner who had the ability to integrate directly with the PsyNet platform to conduct large-scale, global surveys for cross-cultural psychology experiments. 

The insights gathered from these surveys enable Dr Jacoby, his co-founders, and researchers from across the world to advance their understanding of psychology and cognitive abilities by publishing highly-regarded research papers in some of the world’s leading scientific journals.

Solution

PsyNet integrated with the Cint Demand API to access high-quality sample seamlessly and at speed. This has helped them survey audiences in every corner of the world and overcome language barriers in order to produce rich and granular insights for their research. 

Benefits

Benefit one: Scale

PsyNet was able to access the global audience they needed via Cint’s seamless integration. 

“We have recruited more than 30,000 participants from over 60 countries speaking more than 50 languages, enabling us to address core questions in cognition such as cross-cultural language proficiency, emotional responses to music, and color perception across cultures,” says Dr Jacoby

Benefit two: Data quality

Leveraging high-quality data sourced through the Cint integration, Dr Jacoby and the PsyNet team have produced several research papers for leading academic journals that met the high standards expected in academic research.

Quality is of the utmost importance at Cint. To ensure that the data is of the highest quality possible, Cint has developed and deployed tools like Cint Trust Score, a proprietary machine learning/AI service, that proactively predicts when a session may result in a negative reconciliation. By reducing the potential for fraud, customers can have increased confidence in their insights.

Benefit three: Dedicated integration support

“I have worked closely with the Cint team throughout the integration of our research platform PsyNet, enabling large-scale participant recruitment for our cross-cultural psychology experiments,” says Dr Jacoby.

Dr Jacoby adds, “Throughout this process, my Account Manager and Senior Customer Success Analyst provided invaluable support, helping us navigate survey management issues, connecting us with the integration team, and addressing challenges related to participant management.” 

“We also worked very closely with our dedicated Integration Consultant, whose expertise was instrumental in achieving a smooth and successful integration. Keval has an in-depth understanding of the system and has been suggesting practical help and suggestions to solve difficult technical issues.”

Cint’s world-class team of Integration Consultants helps customers like PsyNet create and maintain a completely customized API integration to field, manage, and report on their projects in their preferred platform, at no additional cost. 

Results and conclusions

This collaboration has already contributed to five conference publications, with a paper based on PsyNet’s work having recently been accepted by peer-reviewed journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS).

“As my lab transitions to Cornell University, I am very much looking forward to collaborating with the new team there and hope to achieve a similarly high level of partnership and shared success. I am truly grateful to the entire team for their outstanding support,” says Jacoby.

“From the first meetings with Nori and the PsyNet team, it was clear that they were doing vital work. The complexity of how they test for nuanced psychological data about music, language, and color perception is fascinating, and their enthusiasm is infectious,” says Samantha Grenell-Zaidman, Key Account Manager, Cint.  

“Many partners are passionate about their work, but this team takes it to another level. Through collaborative communication and Cint’s broad panelist reach and dependable data, we helped them build the technical automation necessary to scale their processes globally and make an impact through their important interdisciplinary research.”