Experiments for Credit: Researcher Information
University of Kansas
RULES AND REGULATIONS FOR THE USE OF
THE PSYCHOLOGY RESEARCH PARTICIPATION POOL
Updated Spring 2007 (3/2/07)
Each
student enrolled in Psychology 104 for the fall or spring semesters is
required either to (1) participate as a subject in 5.5 hours (i.e., 11
credits) of research, or (2) write a short term paper concerned with
psychological research. (Nearly all of the students enrolled in
Psychology 104 in a given semester choose the research participation
option). Summer sections of Psychology 104 require 3 hours (i.e., 6
credits) of research participation. Other courses may also require
research participation and will utilize the same system.
It is important that all of those who use the subject pool (researchers
and research supervisors) familiarize themselves with these rules and
procedures so that participants are treated with respect and the
educational goals of this requirement are met. Any investigator who
knowingly violates these rules will lose the privilege of using the
subject pool.
Research supervisors (including instructors of Psyc. 480, 618, 620, 622,
624, and 625 and Clinics 1 and IV) are responsible for providing these
guidelines to each of their students and for insuring that each
understands and adheres to them. Any person working with participants in
the subject pool should study these rules and regulations and then come
to the Psychology Department office and take a brief "open book" quiz on
the regulations. Passage of this quiz is necessary before any
participants are run.
All individuals conducting research involving human subjects must complete the online tutorial required by the Human Subjects Committee (HSC) at:
http://www.rcr.ku.edu/hscl/hsp_tutorial/000.shtml
All researchers must read the “Psychology Research Participant Pool - General Statement” at:
http://www.psych.ku.edu/psych_resources/experiments_student.shtml
The complete system manual can be found at:
http://www.sona-systems.com/support/docs/ems_v265_docs.pdf
I. OBTAINING PARTICIPANTS FROM THE SUBJECT POOL
Only researchers affiliated with the Psychology Department may use participants from the Psychology 104 subject pool following departmental receipt of HSC approval. These include:
1. Faculty members & graduate students supervised by faculty members.
2. Undergraduates in the Psychology Honors Program, supervised by their faculty advisors.
3. Undergraduates supervised by professors or graduate students in the department.
4. Undergraduates in the Experimental Psychology courses: Psyc. 618, 620, 622, 624, or 625.
5. Undergraduate students enrolled in an Independent Psychology courses Psyc 480 & 481.
6. Graduate students enrolled in Clinics I and IV.
7. Faculty members or graduate students outside the Psychology Department if approved in advance by the Subject Pool Committee and co-sponsored by a Psychology Department faculty person.
Note: University of Kansas regulations specify that all research by KU staff or students involving human subjects be approved by the Human Subjects Committee (HSC-Lawrence Campus) prior to the initiation of such research. HSC is located in the Office of Research Support (235 Youngberg Hall - 864-7429). HSC Forms are also available in 426 Fraser and via the web at: http://www.rcr.ku.edu/hscl/hscl_handbook/app_b.shtml
Studies must have both a Researcher and a Principal Investigator identified. Principal Investigators must be a Psychology Department faculty member and have ultimate responsibility for studies. Researchers are the people directly involved with running the study. Both accounts have access to the studies. A Psychology Department faculty member may have both types of accounts if appropriate.
Participants may be obtained in two ways:
1. Participants may enroll in your study using the web-based scheduling system.
2. The researcher may contact eligible participants directly via email or phone, based on responses from the on-line Pre-Screening survey.
Note: Researchers may NOT solicit Psychology 104 students' participation via (1) class announcements, (2) campus postings, or (3) telephone calls based on names obtained from class rosters or any other source. Researchers may, however, petition the Subject Pool Committee to consider exceptional circumstances that may require special recruitment procedures.
II. RULES ABOUT RESEARCH PARTICIPATION WEB SIGN-UP
Researchers will first need to request a "researcher account" for the web-based system. Contact the office staff in 426 Fraser for a "System Account Request" form. Complete the form and turn into the office staff. In addition, researchers should study the Instructions for Researchers in the System Documentation from the company. See the link above. Once a researcher has an account, he or she can create experiments. When setting up an experiment for the first time, you will be prompted for a variety of details regarding you study. Most of the policies listed in this section specify constraints on how you can set up your experiment within the web-based system.
A. Individual studies will be identified by the unique Study Name you assign to the experiment (see below for naming guidelines). In addition, every study requires a Primary Investigator (PI) to be listed. The PI is the faculty supervisor who is responsible for that study.
B. Before a study can officially start running, it must be approved by a system administrator. Once you have created an experiment, contact the office staff in 426 Fraser to verify the following: 1) completion of the department's use quiz, 2) completion of the on-line tutorial required by the HSC, and 3) current HSC-L approval. The staff will verify that your study is compliant & activate your study so that it is visible to participants. You may use the "[Send a Request] to make this study visible" button in SONA to send the request to the office staff.
C. Once your HSC approval expires, the study will be automatically de-activated by the system. Please stay up-to-date with HSC approval by informing a system administrator of HSC updates. If you are done with an experiment, please de-activate the study on the system.
D. You must provide a clear means for participants to contact the researchers. This should include an email address and a phone number. If you do not have a phone, you may use the Department number (4-4131); however, you MUST notify the office staff that you are using the Department phone number for contact information & cancellations.
E. Information that may encourage students to sign up for a particular study (e.g., "Only 20 minutes", "This is an interesting study", "This study involves sex", “Study involves completing a survey”) is absolutely PROHIBITED. For the same reason, you must enter multiples of 30 minutes into the Duration field.
F. Placement of ANY descriptive information about a study in sections visible to participants is absolutely PROHIBITED. You are encouraged to include special instructions regarding: a) the location of your study, b) clarification of cancellation procedures, and c) clarification of no prior participation.
G. For graduate & undergraduate students it is mandatory that the name and contact information of the faculty supervisor be included in the "Detailed Description" Section of your study.
H. If you need to restrict participation for your study, you should use the Pre-Screening feature of the system. If you are using the Pre-Screening Feature of the system, you can automatically apply eligibility criteria. In this case, no approval is needed and your study will only be visible to students who qualify. Except for specifying the gender of participants, researchers may NOT display eligibility criteria in material visible to participants. Researchers must petition the Subject Pool Committee if they wish to be granted an exception.
I. Researchers, staff, and participants should refer to a study by the Study Name. When entering the Study Name in the experiment creation phase, please select a name that will uniquely identify your study using the following conventions. The first set of characters should consist of the researchers' last name(s) followed by the characters "Study". A second set of characters can consist of a simple alpha-numeric labeling convention established your research team. You will then use this name to identify your study to participants (e.g., for door signs). For example, "Crandall Study A1" and "Snyder Shorey Study HA4" would be valid Study Names. However, "Grobe Study on Alcohol" would not be a valid name as it includes descriptive information about the study.
J. No single research study may use more than 700 subject participation credits. For purposes of the limit, separate listings on SONA will be counted as part of the same "study" if participating in one makes a student ineligible to particate in another or if one listing is required to participate in another listing. Exceptions must be approved by the Subject Pool Committee. The subject pool administrator will track credit use and will shut down experiments that exceed this limit. When starting a new experiment, do not reuse an existing study listing or the limit may be inadvertently exceeded. In addition, a researcher's combined web-based studies cannot exceed 700 participants in a term. Note that SONA will automatically set a limit of 600 hours (1200 credits) for each experiment. The true limit is 700. We set it at 1200 because SONA enforces credit limits based on slots scheduled not actual credits used so as the limit is approached it becomes difficult to schedule sessions for studies where many more slots are posted than actually filled. Finally, in order to ensure that the subject pool is an educational experience, no experiment can grant more than six credits.
K. Information should be provided in the Description Section of your experiment informing participants how they can cancel their appointment for your study. All students can use the cancel option via the web system. However, students may also choose to make a phone call. You MUST provide a phone number for cancellations. If you don’t have a phone number to use for cancellations, you can use the Psychology Department’s number (864-4131); however, you MUST inform the office staff that you will use the Department’s number for cancellations. You can also specify a third option for cancellations in the text boxes (e.g., informing students that they can cancel via email).
III. ON-LINE PRE-SCREENING FEATURE
Researchers may submit short questionnaires to be automatically administered on-line, due the first day of classes (Fall and Spring terms). Summer sessions will be treated as a continuation of Spring with regards to the prescreen and so new prescreens will not be posted. The first Monday of the term there will be a meeting of pretesters to coordinate the questions and resolve issues. The pretest will then be activated the second Monday of the term. Every student in the research pool will be prompted to complete this pre-screening survey. Students who complete the pretest by the third Monday of the term will receive a credit. Detailed instructions for the Pre-Screening Surveys will be distributed in a memo at the beginning of each term. The Pre-Screening questionnaire for a study should not exceed 25 questions. A typical participant should be able to complete the questions for one study in less than 10 minutes. Researchers must petition the Subject Pool Committee if they wish to be granted an exception to these limitations.
These surveys are NOT FOR DATA COLLECTION, but only for the
screening of
participants for testing later in the semester (to avoid cluttering
up the pretest).
Researchers have two options for using the pre-screener (unless you
seek and are granted an exception from the Research Pool Use
Committee):
1. You can set eligibility criteria based on the Pre-Screening
Survey and have the system display your study to only eligible
participants.
2. You can contact eligible participants through SONA; SONA will
send emails that use standardized wording to eligible participants,
inviting them to contact you about your study.
If you have a good reason for needing to email eligible
participants, you can request an exception from the Research Pool
Use Committee. You would need to submit (a) your reasons for needing
to email eligible participants directly, rather than contacting them
through SONA, and (b) the exact text that you will send. If an
exception is granted, you would need to email eligible participants
one at a time or email them by blind copying (Bcc-ing) them. The
purpose is to protect the privacy of eligible students so that they
do not know the names or email addresses of other eligible students.
Restrictions on what can
be said about the experiment for SONA listings applies to these
recruitment contacts as well. The participant can also be told
that they have been selected for an invitation to the study or
something along those lines. Once the participant has explicitly
agreed to be in the study there are no longer any restrictions (and
the participant can withdraw of course). If the participant
withdraws at this point, s/he isn't eligible for a credit since the
experiment session hasn't actually started yet (no consent form for
one thing). Finally, e-mail should be text only (no fancy
multi-media or whatnot). Note:
If you desire to do your own mass testing you can coordinate with
other researchers and setup a separate experiment on the web-system
(e.g., 1 hour of filling out questionnaires from several researchers
& then use batch credit option in the web-system).
All students must complete the on-line screening session. However, each item in the survey will have an "opt-out" or "decline to answer" option. Contact information is associated with each set of responses so that researchers can contact eligible participants at a later date. Students receive one credit for completing the pre-screening surveys by the third Monday (Fall and Spring terms).
Note: It is important that experimenters (1) not unnecessarily delay notifying students who have "qualified" for the experiment and that (2) the appointments be scheduled as soon as possible. Students who have been told by experimenters that they will be scheduled for testing some time later in the semester and who then are not contacted for several months are likely to become worried that they have been forgotten and/or sign up for other experiments so that they do not need any more credits. The former situation is a hardship on the student; the latter means that the researcher loses "qualified" subjects.
IV. SCHEDULING PARTICIPANTS FROM PRE-SCREENING DATA:
You have several options for using the pre-screening features.
A. You can have the system automatically score items from your section of the pre-screening survey and then display your study ONLY to those participants who meet your eligibility criteria. You can set eligibility criteria based on responses to single items or based on the sum or average of a set of items. In either case, you items will need to be presented in a multiple-choice format. (See system manual for more instructions).
B. You can download the pre-screening survey data for your section and score the data yourself. Names and contact information will be associated with each participant's set of responses. This will allow you to contact participants who are eligible for your study. This can be done via several mechanisms.
1. You can then post available times on the web system and give out “authorization” codes & the Study Name to only those students who qualify for your study. The system allows you to set up an experiment that requires an authorization code (or password) for a student to sign up. Please make sure the student has clear instructions including your name, the study name, and an authorization code that will allow that participant to sign up for times you have posted on the web system.
2. You may schedule participants by phone. If you are scheduling student appointment times via phone, you should take special precautions. First, you are strongly encouraged to schedule the session on the web system. You are allowed to schedule a session on behalf of the participants. If you schedule a session that does not appear on the web-system, the participant will not be able to cancel via the web. In addition, they will not be able to check the web to confirm the time and location of the study. If you do not schedule the session on the web, you will need to make sure the participant knows how to cancel the appointment. Please make sure the student writes down the following information: your name, study name, date, time, room location, and all contact information (e.g., phone and email). Have the subject repeat the information so no misinformation is given. You should make arrangements to send the participant confirmation of the schedule details. In addition, make sure the participant has already registered on the web-based system. Credit will always be awarded via the web-based system. Do not leave an appointment time on an answering machine. Have the participant return your call to schedule the appointment time. You may leave them a message offering a variety of times you have available and let them choose before returning your call to confirm.
3. Another alternative to the above procedures is to schedule “open sessions” for eligible participants. You can then inform participants that they can receive credit if they show up for one (and only one) of several available sessions. You will not officially assign an appointment time, but will only give credit if the person completes one of your available sessions. Thus, a student cannot be penalized for a no-show with this approach. Rather, he or she can attend one of several possible sessions based upon personal convenience.
V. GENERAL PROCEDURE FOR ASSIGNING RESEARCH CREDITS
Experimenters record all research credit via the web-based system. Consult the System Documentation for details on the various ways to assign credit. One credit = 1/2 hour participation. In most cases, students will need a total of 11 credits for the semester. Fractional credits are not allowed. 1-30 minutes = 1 credit. 31-60 minutes = 2 credits. etc. etc.
Please give the participant some form of RECEIPT of participation. This will be used if an error occurs in the web-system and credit was not assigned electronically. A receipt could take the form of the participant’s copy of the consent form. However, be sure to include the following information on all “Research Credit Receipts”: Your name, Study Name, date, time, and duration of the study, credits received, your contact information (e.g., phone number, email address). Instruct the participant to keep the “receipt” until he or she has verified receiving credit on the web system.
If after reading the "Informed Consent" form (which is required for all experiments) a subject declines to participate in the experiment, he/she should be gracefully excused from the experiment and given one credit, despite not having participated in the experiment.
If a student who shows up for an experiment cannot be used for any reason (e.g., the equipment has failed, more subjects than are necessary for a group experiment have arrived), the research participation credit(s) that the subject would have earned must be assigned, even if the subject is rescheduled. At the time of the rescheduled testing session(s) (if any) the subject must again receive the appropriate credit.
For experiments involving multiple testing sessions the subject should receive his/her research credit(s) after completing each session. If after a particular session the subject declines to participate further, the credit(s) earned to that point have be awarded. If a subject participates in one (or more) session(s), but fails to show up for the remaining one(s) and has not rescheduled or canceled he/she should be given one "No Show."
Students may cancel experiments via the web-based system, or by calling. You can also give participants the option of canceling via email. If they cancel at least 60 minutes before the experiment time you should NOT give a "No-Show" slip. You may try to reschedule for another time. You should ALWAYS check all three cancellation modalities (web, email, voicemail) to see if a participant cancelled before logging a "No-Show” on the web-based system.
G. Subject "No Shows." Experimenters will record a "No Show" via the web-based system within 48 hours of the research appointment. The system will assign a 1 credit penalty for a “No Show” by increasing the number of credits required for completion.
H. Experimenters are to WAIT 5 MINUTES before giving the subject a "No Show." A "No Show" is assigned by the system by increasing the credit requirements for that participant by 1 credit. It is very important that experimenters not allow "no shows" to accumulate; record “no-shows” on the system within 48 hours of the no show.
I. Experimenter "No Shows." This will be handled by the EXPERIMENTER. The experimenter should make arrangements to assign +1 credit on the web system and notify the student of the missed appointment. Students are to WAIT 5 MINUTES for the experimenter before determining that it is an experimenter "no show". The student may also contact the experimenter directly when it becomes clear that the experimenter is absent. The student may report the “Experimenter No Show” directly to the experimenter within 24 hours. The experimenter should respond to the student's request within 48 hours. If a participant has not received a satisfactory response, he or she can file a "Complaint Form" with the main office. The office staff and/or the research pool coordinator will make a final decision on the complaint and assign credit if necessary. Note: Depending on the nature of the “Complaint Forms” received for an experimenter, the Subject Use Committee may decide on disciplinary action, which may include suspension of access to the subject pool.
J. If the experimenter needs to cancel a session they may do so by contacting the participant directly (meaning an actual conversation) at least 24 hours before the appointment. If the experiment needs to cancel within less than 24 hours, or is unable to reach the participant in person, he/she should leave a note for the subject(s) on the laboratory door, leave phone and email messages for the participant, and notify the Department secretary. The note should inform the subject(s) that he/she/they have been credited with the appropriate research participation credit(s) via the web system. As soon as possible, the experimenter must arrange to record credit via the web-system so the student may be credited.
K. An experimenter has 48 hours to award any credits due to the participant including credit for completion of a study, experimenter no-show credits, and penalty credits. In addition, an experimenter should respond to any participant complaints with 48 hours. If an experimenter fails to address a student's complaints, the participant should be instructed to file a "Researcher Complaint Form" in the Psychology Department office (426 Fraser). Depending on the nature of the “Complaint Forms” received for an experimenter, the Subject Use Committee may decide on disciplinary action, which may include suspension of access to the subject pool.
VI. WEB-BASED EXPERIMENTS
The system has several features for conducting on-line, web-based experiments. See system documentation for detailed instructions. Web-based experiments are approved by the department if HSC has reviewed the study and granted IRB approval. Please note that students can earn no more than 30% of their credits from web-based experiments. Web-based experiments are subject to the same policies as other experiments, including debriefing procedures.
VI. EXPLAINING THE PURPOSE OF THE EXPERIMENT
In order to maintain the credibility of the claim that research participation is an educational experience it is necessary that students be educated in some way about research in general and/or about the specific research in which they have just participated. Therefore, it is the experimenter's obligation to clearly explain the specific purpose and procedures of the experiment to the subject at the end of the testing session. If, for the purpose of maintaining the experimental naiveté of future subjects, a full explanation is not possible at that time, the experimenter must explicitly arrange to provide such an explanation at a later date. All experimenters should always provide the subject with a general idea of what the experiment was about and why it is of importance (theoretically, practically, or both) at the end of the testing session(s).
VII. EXTRA CREDIT FOR PARTICIPATION BEYOND THE INITIAL REQUIREMENT
When requested by an instructor, the coordinator of the subject pool will determine whether or not extra credit will be allowed for research participation. This will occur four weeks prior to the end of the semester and only if requested by an instructor. If extra credit is allowed, the coordinator will notify all researchers and instructors. Typically, this option involves 2-6 extra credits.
Questions or comments may be directed to the Subject Pool Committee.
