Abstract
In response to the COVID-19 pandemic shut-down of in-person research
laboratories, remote data collection became mainstream in developmental
psychology research. The aim of this study was to test the feasibility
of two remote data collection methods for studying sleep and motor
development in infancy and the relationship between the two. We asked
1,371 parents of infants aged 4 to 17 months who used the Nanit baby
monitor to take the on-line Survey of Well-being of Young Children
(SWYC) about their infants’ motor experience. Nanit uses
auto-videosomnography and computer vision algorithms to calculate and
report summary statistics of infants’ sleep. Nanit replicated all
expected developmental trends in sleep, while the SWYC only replicated
some, appearing to underestimate infants at the transition between motor
milestones. However, we replicated some well-established findings
regarding the relationship between sleep and motor development using
both measures, suggesting that both Nanit and the SWYC can feasibly be
used for remote data collection, especially if some modifications were
made to how researchers explained using the SWYC to caregivers.
Researchers should consider alternatives to traditional research methods
not only when in-person participation is difficult or impossible, but
also when large samples are needed and/or simple measurement tools are
sufficient.