DOLD: a digital platform for conducting online language experiments and surveys

Despite its potential for reducing costs, increasing efficiency, and expanding participant diversity, online data collection has not been widely adopted in linguistics and language studies. DOLD, a free digital platform tailored to the needs of online language experiments and surveys, was launched to advance the utilization of the online method in the field. It supports multimedia stimulus presentation and different types of responses, featuring voice recording. Researchers can create customized experiments and surveys on the platform by predefining parameters such as stimulus duration, text in button labels, when to accept responses, whether to allow re-recording, when to end tasks, and whether to skip tasks based on prior responses. Via share links, participants can access and go through DOLD experiments and surveys online. Responses are automatically collected, complete with metadata such as response time and auto transcription. Stored in cloud storage, experiment materials, settings and responses can be easily retrieved, edited, and shared among collaborators from anywhere. Facilitating different language production tasks, such as picture naming, storytelling, sentence reading and repetition, in addition to various perception tests, DOLD has applications across diverse domains in the field, ranging from language acquisition to dialectology. By enabling efficient online data collection from speakers of different languages worldwide, as well as enhancing standardization and collaboration in language data collection, the platform lowers the threshold for large-scale cross-linguistic projects. DOLD is a digital solution to the long-standing geographical constraints on research in linguistics and language studies.