The Psychology Research Participant Pools
Students conducting research in psychology who require a human population most often recruit participants from the General Pool. Occasionally, depending upon the faculty research outlook in a general semester and/or sample demographic needs, some SMP and lab students may receive permission to recruit from the Intro Pool that is used by faculty. Faculty may opt to use the General Pool in addition to the Intro Pool.
All Registered SMCM Students Pool/Raffle Participants
Participants for standard lab and online studies can also be recruited from the all registered student population [through email via the research participant pool manager] as part of the Psychology Research Data Collection Raffle. Researchers who want to use this population must be sure to include it in the project’s Institutional Review Board (IRB) proposal.
Research Participant Pool Manager: Angie Draheim, Goodpaster Hall 116, x4290, ardraheim@smcm.edu
Process for Setting Up Psychology Studies
Standard (Lab or Virtual) Studies
- Shortly before or just after submitting a proposal for IRB approval, request an appointment with the Research Participant Pool Manager to discuss specific study needs and set up a researcher account on the system. One should arrange the meeting for at least one week in advance of the date they plan to collect data.
- Send the research participant pool manager a copy of the IRB proposal and a completed “Study Set-Up Form” via email at least 24 hours prior to the scheduled meeting.
- In the meeting, the research participant pool manager will help the researcher to set up the basic study information on the Research Participant Pool Website (Sona-systems), work out the logistics of the study location(s) and timeslots, and provide follow-up instructions for running the study and assigning participant credit.
- Study timeslots will not be made available for signups until notification of IRB approval is received and any necessary changes are made.
- Send the research participant pool manager a draft of your participant recruitment message (template will be provided during the initial meeting)
- Please note that credit sheets are due on Fridays. If an experiment runs for multiple weeks, credit sheets are still due each Friday.
Online (Web) Studies
- Shortly before or just after submitting a proposal for IRB approval, request an appointment with the Research Participant Pool Manager to discuss specific study needs and set up a researcher account on the system. One should arrange the meeting for at least one week in advance of the date they plan to collect data.
- Send the research participant pool manager a copy of the IRB proposal and a completed “Study Set-Up Form” via e-mail at least 24 hours prior to the scheduled meeting.
In the meeting, the Research Participant Pool Manager will help the researcher to set up the basic study information on the Research Participant Pool Website (Sona-systems), provide an individualized tutorial on how to best format the survey using the College’s Qualtrics account** (free for faculty & students), and give follow-up “how-to” instructions. - Build and preview the survey using tutorial tips and the “how-to” instructions provided.
- Email the research participant pool manager to ask for a review of the survey and include a draft of your participant recruitment message (template will be provided during the initial tutorial). After this final review and any necessary changes are made, the survey will be launched provided IRB approval has been received and instructor/mentor approval has been given.
- Instructions for awarding credit to participants and data retrieval are included in the “how-to” instructions.
Very brief online surveys (< 15min)
If your study will be very brief (<5 minutes) where possible/reasonable you should attempt to combine it with another brief study so that participants can sign up for 16 min (.5 credit) or 30 min (1 credit) timeslots. The research participant pool manager will help facilitate this process.
**Psychology faculty or students planning to conduct a Qualtrics study using the research pools and offering credit for research participation or raffle entries are strongly encouraged to work with the Research Participant Pool Manager to use the department’s example template shell from which to build the survey rather than creating it on their own.
Other Resources for Online Studies
If an online study requires the use of non-SMCM students as participants, one can recruit outside of the research participant pool system so long as the online resource is identified in the IRB proposal.
For example, online participants may be recruited using Amazon Mechanical Turk or Academic Prolific (both require payment to participants) or by posting a link to the online survey on one of the following (free) sites: