In recent years, voluntary associations and political organizations have increasingly switched to Internet-based mobilization campaigns, replacing traditional forms of face-to-face recruitment and mobilization. The existing body of empirical research on Internet-based mobilization, however, is not conclusive about the effects this form of mobilization might have. In this article, the authors argue that this lack of strong conclusions might be due to the failure to distinguish different behavioral outcomes of mobilization, and more specifically, a distinction between online and off-line forms of participation is missing. In this experimental study, participants were exposed to potentially mobilizing information either by way of face-to-face interaction or by website. The results of the experiment indicate that web-based mobilization only has a significant effect on online participation, whereas face-to-face mobilization has a significant impact on off-line behavior, which would imply that mobilization effects are medium-specific. The authors close with some observations on what these findings might imply for the democratic consequences of the current trend toward an increasing reliance on Internet-based forms of political mobilization.

In the social sciences, the use of experimental research has expanded greatly in recent years. For various reasons, most experiments rely on convenience samples of undergraduate university students. This practice, however, might endanger the validity of experimental findings, as we can assume that students will react differently to experimental conditions than the general population. We therefore urge experimental researchers to broaden their pool of participants, despite the obvious practical difficulties this might entail with regard to recruitment and motivation of the participants. We report on an experiment comparing the reactions of student and non-student participants, showing clear and significant differences. A related problem is that differential attrition rates might endanger the effects found in long-term research. We argue that experimental researchers should pay more attention to the characteristics of participants in their experimental design.

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Voting Advice Applications (VAAs) provide nonpartisan and interactive information during election campaigns, and match the policy demand of users with the political supply of parties. But do VAAs influence citizens’ electoral decisions? Do they help the undecided to form a political preference, and lead the decided to change their vote choice? This article reports a randomized field experiment to evaluate the effect of the Vote Compass, a VAA used in Quebec, on users’ electoral preferences. Given Quebec's multidimensional political space, VAAs have the potential to assist citizens in making a complex electoral decision. The results show that the VAA's users are more likely to form an electoral preference, but this is only the case in the short term among 30‐year‐olds, the higher educated, and more politically interested users. At the same time, using a VAA mostly impacts party preferences of voters in the short term: the politically uninterested and older users are more likely to change their party preferences, whereas 30‐year‐olds and politically interested users are less likely to change their initial party preference. This study provides evidence that the VAA cognitively engaged users, but not that it leads to vote switching on Election Day.

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