What type of online research involves participants posting regularly over a period of days?

The type of online research that involves participants posting regularly over a period of days is best described as a bulletin board. This method resembles an online discussion forum where participants engage with each other over time, allowing for a deep exploration of topics and gathering rich qualitative data.

The bulletin board format is designed to promote ongoing conversation, which can yield insights into participant experiences, opinions, and feelings as they interact with the topic and with each other. This engagement over days helps researchers gain a more profound understanding of the subject matter than a single point-in-time response, which is typical of surveys.

Each participant’s regular contributions help create a dynamic research environment, encouraging threads of discussion that may change and develop based on other participants’ responses. This longitudinal aspect distinguishes bulletin boards from other research methods like surveys, which typically collect data at a single moment, and focus groups, which involve a one-time meeting of participants. While panel studies can sometimes involve multiple waves of data collection, they usually focus on a consistent group responding to structured surveys rather than the open-ended dialogue characteristic of bulletin boards.