The combination of a replication crisis, global COVID-19 pandemic, and recent
technological advances have accelerated the on-going transition of research in
cognitive psychology and behavioural neuroscience to the online realm. When
participants cannot be tested in-person in the laboratory, data of acceptable quality
can be collected online still. While conducting research online has many advantages
and generic advice on their infrastructure and implementation exists, numerous
pitfalls can hinder researchers addressing their research question appropriately or
even result in unusable data. Here, we present detailed best practice suggestions
that span the range from initial study design to the final interpretation of the data.
These suggestions take a critical look at issues regarding the recruitment of typical
and (sub)clinical samples, their comparison, and the importance of contextdependency for each part of a study. We illustrate our suggestions by means of a
recent online study investigating cognitive working memory skills in adult dyslexia.