Web-based research: an innovative method for nursing research.

Although still in its infancy, the World Wide Web presents unparalleled opportunities for harnessing the power of the Internet to collect data from populations of interest in an economical and efficient manner. Web-based surveys offer a number of strengths including access to specific populations, speed of data access, and decreased data collection and data entry costs. These advantages are likely to increase as more people begin to use the Web as their primary means of communication. Nurse researchers who embrace this technology will become the pioneers in the new age of nursing research.