The Psychology Department at The University of Oregon

Human Subjects Research Pool Overview, Guidelines & Instruction
for Researchers

Each student enrolled in Psychology 201 and 202 and Linguistics 290 and 396 is required to either (1) participate as a subject in 4.5 hours of research and complete research experience reports or (2) read some research papers, provided by the class instructor, and write a paper about them, or (3) linguistics students may choose to attend linguistics colloquia.

Everyone who uses the subject pool (principal investigators and research assistants) must follow these rules and procedures so that participants are treated ethically and with respect and that the educational goals of this requirement are met. Any investigator who violates these rules will lose the privilege of using the subject pool. In addition, failure to follow these rules may jeopardize the existence of the human subjects pool. Other universities have lost their human subjects pools due to violations and we cannot afford this loss. Be aware that YOUR compliance to these rules impacts many other researchers!

Principal investigators are responsible for providing these guidelines to their RAs and for insuring that each understands and adheres to them. ALL persons working with participants in the subject pool must study these rules and regulations and complete an "open book" quiz on the regulations. The quiz is posted on the human subjects pool blackboard site. Your study may ONLY be run when the PI and all RAs who have contact of any sort with participants have taken and passed the quiz. The quiz must be passed annually as the protocol is renewed annually and changes are reflected in the quiz content.

All researchers must read the "Psychology Research Participant Pool Participant Guide" (for students) at:

http://www.uoregon.edu/~hscoord/hs-students.html

It is recommended that researchers also read the Sona Manual located at:

psychweb.uoregon.edu/hs/uo_psych_sona_researcher_manual.pdf

Overview

History

The human subjects research pool (HSP) was created in 1989 by the Psychology Department. The goals defined at that time were threefold: First, provide participants with an educational research experience. Second, enable students to provide a meaningful contribution to the sum of human knowledge by providing information that may solve important psychological questions. Third, allow graduate and honors students to have access to experimental subjects to carry out their program requirements.

Basic Principles for Conducting Ethical Research with the Human Subjects Pool:

  1. Ensure that your protocol is approved for use with Human Subjects (i.e., that it is approved by the Office for the Protection of Human Subjects [OPHS]). This ensures that informed consent is obtained, subjects are protected from harm, negative aftereffects are removed, and confidentiality is maintained.
  2. Adequately debrief subjects. While some studies may not provide detailed debriefings, the HSP is designed with subject education in mind. As such, researchers who use the HSP must ensure that participants walk away with knowledge of the study, its methods, and its motivations.

OPHS/privilege/discrimination/responsibilities:

The existence of the Human Subjects Pool and the privilege to use it should not be taken for granted. The OPHS requires that the benefits to the all subjects outweigh the costs to them. Because HSP participants are being compensated with course credit, it is very unlikely that this will occur if there is any serious cost or harm done to the participants! Further, because we reward one hour of participation with one credit (regardless of the study's procedure), studies must pose at most a minimal risk to participants. This is defined by the OPHS as any risk or harm greater than that which people normally face in their everyday lives. It is equally important that we do no harm, not only to participants in our individual studies but to ALL possible participants in the HSP. Below are some characteristics of the HSP. Based on the demographic makeup of the HSP, it would be discriminatory if studies were available to only one demographic subset of the pool (for example, only to males or to females). Because there are times when there are few studies available, it is possible that a "males-only" or "females-only" study may be the only one available--at such a time, the HSP is discriminating against the gender that cannot participate! This applies to all standard demographic categories, though it is generally fine to actively recruit minorities for studies that are studying minorities as a central question for investigation, however it is less permissible to exclude minorities. Each term, all studies that would like to restrict participation based on any demographic characteristic will be considered together, by applying for the prescreening. Well-justified restrictions will be permitted only if a small number of studies have the restriction, if approved by the Human Subjects Coordinator and the OPHS. Restrictions based on physical ability to complete the study (for example, normal hearing or normal/corrected vision) will generally be allowed. Please make this clear when requesting a restriction. Age restrictions are generally not allowed for studies in the HSP. One way to get around these restrictions is to offer other participation options in an appropriately proportional manner: For example, if you need to study same-sex dyads, opening twice as many same-sex female dyad pairs as male dyad pairs would not be discriminatory (but check with the HSC to verify the ratio each term).

Characteristics of the HSP

 
Fall 2004
Winter 2005
Age
Mean (SD)
19.64 (3.45)
20.8 (3.75)
 
Range in years
17 - 52
17 - 55
Ethnicity
Caucasian
78.6%
79%
 
Asian/Pacific islander
9.9%
7.6%
 
Hispanic
2%
5%
 
Native American
0.5%
1.7%
 
Other/biracial
9%
6.7%
Native English speakers
93%
93.4%
Gender
Female
71%
64%
Year in School
Freshman
45%
50%
 
Sophomore
31%
24%
 
Junior
15%
17%
 
Senior
7%
8%
 
Other
2%
1%
Sexuality
Gay/lesbian
1%
1%

In addition to the above anti-discrimination policy, the OPHS further requires that all studies using the HSP address the issue of confidentiality in their protocols. Data is confidential if actual results (e.g., responses) are kept separate from any identifying information such as surnames or contact information. While the OPHS may make exceptions, it is strongly recommended that each protocol follow this rule.

Applying to Run Studies with the Human Subject Pool

Only researchers affiliated with the Psychology and Linguistics Departments may use participants from the HSP.

These include:

  1. Tenure-track, tenured, or emeritus faculty members in the UO Psychology or Linguistics program
  2. Graduate students or post-docs with tenure-track, tenured, or emeritus faculty advisors
  3. Undergraduates in the Psychology Honors Program or in the Honors College, supervised by their Psychology or Linguistics faculty advisor.
  4. Anybody else (such as adjunct or visiting faculty, or graduate students outside Psychology or Linguistics), only if approved in advance by the Executive Committee. Download the application form (doc).

ALL studies must have OPHS approval before they can be run using the HSP. The protocols must specifically state that they are using participants from the human subjects pool. Access protocol application forms at: www.uoregon.edu/~humansub/. Note (see above) that the OPHS will not approve any study for use with the HSP that has more than "minimal" risk, defined as risks that do not exceed that which is experienced in everyday life.

Debriefings must be approved both by the OPHS and the HSC. Send your debriefing first to the OPHS to ensure that, generally speaking, it fulfills the requirements of debriefings (e.g., that it ameliorates any potential harm). Then, send your debriefing to the HSC along with answers to the Research Experience Report (RER) forms that participants must fill out. This ensures that your debriefing contains enough information for students to gain sufficient educational experience from participating in research. To have a debriefing and RER questions approved, fill out the web survey at http://www.uoregon.edu/~hscoord/rer-creation.html. The HS coordinator will send approval via email. You may forward this approval email to your OPHS contact as part of your application. Researchers should submit all debriefings (including modifications) with the RER answers, using that web form. Sending a debriefing, RER set, or word document via email to the Human Subjects Coordinator is not appropriate and will result in delays to your study's approval.

A few weeks before the start of every term, the HSC will send out an email to the all@psych mailing list and to selected other researchers (such as the Linguistics PI for the HSP protocol). This will link to a web survey that allows researchers to apply for credits. There is generally a one-week window during which this occurs; faculty members who are sponsoring an undergraduate honors student, a post-doc, or an adjunct faculty member are well-advised to forward this email on, as these individuals may not be on the all@psych email list. This form must be filled out for EACH term you wish to use the HSP. ONE application per researcher, per term, please!

Subject Allocation Procedure

Historically, demand by researchers has exceeded the supply of available subjects hours in the HSP. To address this issue, the current allocation system was approved at the October 3, 2004 Psychology Department faculty meeting. Subsequent researcher/faculty feedback inspired some minor revisions. The current system in place is detailed below.

Allocations are on a per experimenter/PI basis. The applicant should be using the data for his or her own project/publication/requirement. Allocations are made available in Sona by Monday of week 1 of the term. PIs who have used all of their credits are eligible for additional credits from a reserve pool of credits which are released at the end of weeks 3 and weeks 6 of the term. In order to be eligible for these reserve credits, the PI must have opened all of their existing credits as time slots in the HSP. Unscheduled research credits are forfeited by PIs at the end of week 8 of each term and these are redistributed to researchers who have (a) scheduled all of their credit hours and (b) requested more research credit hours. The human subjects coordinator sends a probe email to all researchers who applied for credit at the beginning of the term to solicit requests at each of these three redistribution times. There is no formal application process; just reply to the email to say how many additional subjects you could use. The purpose of these reallocations is to ensure a steady availability of studies for subjects throughout the term.

Transferring or pooling credits. Any researcher may, at his or her request, transfer their credits to another researcher by emailing the HSC and asking that it be done. A faculty member may also request that a "lab account" be created on SONA, to which all lab members may transfer their credits to effectively "pool" the credits. However, each individual researcher must individually apply for credits! Though the researcher may note on his or her application that they would like the credits to go to the pooled lab account, only researchers who fill out the form will have credits assigned to them (and thus put into the lab account).
Type of Psych/Ling Researcher Category Initial allocation
Honors Students & Special cases approved by the Executive Committee

20
General (non-degree-fulfilling) graduate student and post-doc research

40
Faculty

60
MS Thesis research (i.e., research to fulfill the first-year project requirement¹)

60
Ph.D. Thesis research (i.e., dissertation research)²

100

¹ Student must be using these credits for their FYP or MS thesis, and must not have submitted FYP to Lori Olsen/graduate school.
² Student must have completed their preliminary examination and have formed a dissertation committee and be collecting dissertation data with these research credit hours

Recruiting Subjects and Posting or "Advertising" Studies in Sona

  1. Participants may be recruited in two ways:
    1. Participants enroll in your study using the web-based Sona scheduling system. You post time slots and students sign up for times that are convenient for them. The only information students have about the study is the study name, study location, and time commitment (e.g., 15 minutes now, 15 minutes later). Do not provide extra information that is relevant to your research hypothesis or the study's procedure! This biases the selection of participants into studies.
    2. Researchers who use the Prescreen may contact eligible participants directly via email or phone, based on responses from the Prescreen survey. There are several means for contacting participants, and as Sona gets upgrades 2 or 3 times a year, this will be revised. How you contact students (e.g., call people directly, or send a group email where you are blind to peoples' name) will affect your protocol, so figure this out before submitting your application to the OPHS. See the Sona manual for the latest information about possibilities. Also see the section below about prescreening. You may check with the HS coordinator about latest upgrades and options.

  2. CHECKLIST: before a study is made available to students this is what's needed:
    1. Proof of OPHS approval with your application (for example, having your OPHS contact email the HSC)³.
    2. Continuing studies: the correct protocol number is sufficient, but be sure that your OPHS contact forwards the new expiration date to the HSC.
    3. The PI on the allocation application must also be a PI on the OPHS protocol. Students collecting data under their advisors' umbrella protocol(s) MUST be added to that protocol in order to be in charge of that study.³
    4. Restrictions to participation must be approved in the current term's prescreen. This approval must be renewed every term. Restrictions cannot be prejudicial in any way. For example, since the HSP is 70% women, a study recruiting only males will not be approved for data collection in the HSP.

      Make sure you provide a justification EACH time you apply for a restriction. If the restriction is central to the research, e.g., only Japanese speakers because the hypothesis is about Japanese speakers, the restriction will likely be approved. If there are age restrictions, say 18-30 year olds only, this will likely NOT be approved. See section I above regarding discrimination policies.
    5. All research assistants and the PI must complete the department's HSP quiz on the HSP blackboard site. All research assistants listed on an application for subjects are automatically added to the HSP blackboard site and can access the quiz under "course assignments." Note that researcher accounts will never be created for someone who has not passed this quiz!
    6. The Sona experiment listing must be approved by the HS coordinator. You should set up your own study, and use the form to request that the study be approved AFTER your OPHS approval has been submitted to the HSC.
    ³: While this is a requirement for HSP studies, the Human Subjects Coordinator is not responsible for misinformation provided by researchers!

  3. Study De-activation:
    1. If you are done with an experiment, please de-activate the study on the system. Do this by selecting "change study information" in Sona, and then choose the "no" option next to "active study?"
    Automatic Deactivation Happens When:
    1. Protocol approval expires. Time slots cannot be posted past the expiry date.
    2. Changes are made to an experiment in the system. Exceptions are adding and removing personnel listed as researchers in the scroll down menu, and adding/removing time slots
    3. System clean up occurs at the end of each term.
  4. Rules for Posting Studies and Scheduling/Canceling Time Slots:
    1. You must provide a clear means for participants to contact the researcher in charge. This should include an email address which is checked at least once per business day, and a phone number.
    2. You must provide an unambiguous location for participants to show up. Just saying "Straub Hall" is unacceptable; saying "Straub Hall 453" or "Straub Hall Basement Lobby" or "Outside the main doors to Straub Hall" is fine. Basically, the student will ask someone for directions--that person needs to know where to send them.
    3. Information that may encourage students to sign up for a particular study (e.g., "Only 20 minutes", "Study involves completing a survey") is absolutely PROHIBITED.
    4. When posting the study length, round UP to the nearest half hour; each half hour = ½ research credit
    5. Apart from directions for finding the study location, and the time involved (e.g., 15 minute online follow-up, 15 minutes in the lab), placement of ANY descriptive information about a study in sections visible to participants is absolutely PROHIBITED.
    6. If you need to cancel a time slot, you must do so by 9 p.m. the day before the study is to run. If you cancel later than this, or if a researcher no-shows to a study, the participants must each receive 50% of the research credit value of the study rounded UP to the nearest half hour. Each PI/researcher is responsible for assigning these credits in Sona in a timely fashion.

      Minimize cancellations. If you post your time slots far in advance, it is a great inconvenience and frustration to students if you cancel the day before. First email the study through Sona (their email address is beside their sign-up name), and try to reschedule if they have had the appointment for some time. Do this before you select the cancel button, as you cannot email them after you cancel their sign up. Further, you should always Phone the Psychology Department main office as soon as you know you cannot be present. This is far superior to simply not showing up, as it wastes less of the participants' time. Every cancellation is forwarded to the HSC, and researchers who cancel frequently will likely be asked to justify this behavior.
    7. Compensating problematic cancellations. Be aware that students have participation deadlines set by their instructors. If you have to cancel and they miss a deadline you should compensate them by offering to tell them about the study and adequately debrief them so that they can complete their research experience report, OR reschedule them in time for the report to be done.
    8. Cancelling late in the term: This is particularly problematic. Students have limited time late in the term and canceling in week 9 or 10 could result in an incomplete for the student. If you cancel a study during Week 10, you may be required to provide the participant with credit even if they have not participated. Do NOT cancel studies after week 8 if you can at all prevent it. Try to find alternate RAs to run the subject(s) rather than canceling, OR offer to reschedule when you cancel.
    9. If a participant does not show up with enough time to fully participate, you must assign a penalty! You may reschedule with participants if you are able, and then remove the penalty and grant credit when the study is complete, however, you must assign the penalty in the mean time. Only the HSC may forgive penalties.
    10. Credit should be granted (and penalties assessed) within 12 hours of the scheduled timeslot! For online studies, researchers should grant credit to those who have completed participation at least once per day.

Online Prescreening: Find the Hard-to-Find Participant!

  1. The Prescreen: This is a short (25 minute maximum) survey that most participants complete for ½ credit. It allows them to qualify for particular studies. Every student in the HSP is prompted by Sona upon login to complete this prescreening survey and it is estimated that up to 90% of students complete it.
  2. Eligible Researchers: ALL qualified researchers in the HSP are eligible to contribute a short measure to the prescreen. Sona provides several options for how one can utilize the prescreening procedure for filtering and selecting participants to studies. These are detailed below.
  3. Type of Screen: Many types of measures may be used in the prescreening as long as they are short. Multiple choice questions are most efficient and enable researchers to use more features for recruiting participants through Sona. The prescreening in the past has been used to find particular demographics, right-handed students, particular language speakers, to screen for personality traits, particular attitudes, clinical features such as ADHD, head injuries or depression, and particular types of experiences such as parental divorce or trauma history.
  4. Applications: Each term the prescreening has a separate protocol which must be approved by the OPHS. Therefore researchers' applications are due several weeks before the start of each quarter to accommodate this process. All applicants must have prior OPHS approval to use the prescreen for their particular protocol! You can apply for the prescreen online, using a link which will be sent to the all@psych email address by the HSC. There is at least one business week between when the prescreening application link is posted and when the prescreening is closed.
  5. Time constraints: A typical participant should be able to complete the questions for one measure in less than 2 minutes. If the total time to complete the prescreening exceeds 25 minutes, researchers will be requested to restrict their questionnaires. Researchers are encouraged to pilot their measures with at least two students in their lab to get an accurate time estimate.
  6. Limitations:
    1. Measures in the prescreen enable a researcher to efficiently screen and recruit likely participants. Because of time constraints, long measures are not appropriate. For example, measures such as the 28-item Dissociative Experiences Scale or the 21-item Beck Depression Inventory are too time-consuming for the Prescreening unless very few researchers are using it in a particular term. Shortened measures such as the Dissociative Taxon or 6 to 10 key questions from the BDI are more appropriate for the actual prescreening. The prescreening must never take more than 30 minutes.
    2. Any questions about suicidality are not permitted.
    3. The prescreen is not for final data collection: See general survey section. This means that you must be using the prescreening to restrict or identify qualifying participants. If you have a measure you need all participants to take before participating in your study, use the general survey!

  7. Note: Researchers using the Prescreen should schedule eligible participants as soon as possible in the term, especially if screening for relatively rare characteristics. Otherwise, eligible students may sign up for other studies before they have a chance to do your study. Starting in the Fall of 2005, the HSC may track the number of eligible students and the number of successfully recruited for each Prescreen measure. Please be prepared to report this at the end of each term.

Scheduling Participants from Prescreening Data:

You have several options for using the pre-screening features. Make sure that you explicitly state in your OPHS protocol which of these features you are using.

  1. Study Displayed to All Eligible Participants Only:
    1. Good for high base rate populations
    2. Methodological bonus: Participants are "blind" to the fact that they qualify for your study (or at worst, they know that it is based on ONE of their prescreening responses)
    3. Researchers have found this method fine for running ~ 100+ subjects/term
    4. Favorite option of the OPHS because students' prescreening responses are anonymous.
    5. Greatly reduces your lab labor load

    How it works: Sona automatically scores items from your measure and then displays 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. You can choose any range for the score, e.g., people who score < 10 and > 20 on your measure, or only people who score between 10 and 15 on your measure.

  2. Email Invitations Through Sona
    1. Good for high and low base rate populations
    2. Researchers have found up to 70% of eligible participants will do the studies if contacted early in the term
    3. Recruit from a LARGER subject base! If you contact subjects directly (see below option #3), you miss out on subjects who do not provide contact information. This option uses the subjects' Sona accounts, so all eligible participants receive your recruitment message, even if they did not provide an email address in the prescreen.
    4. OPHS likes anonymity and favors this option over (#3 below) directly contacting participants individually
    5. Low recruitment effort on your part
    6. You can EITHER use a password for your study so only eligible participants sign up OR you can combine this with option #1, and restrict who sees your study on the list of available studies.
    7. You need to (likely) open more time slots than you will use in order to have students find suitable times for their schedules
    8. Do NOT use this option if you are sending messages to far more students than you have time slots available! If you do so, you are basically spamming a lot of students. If far more are eligible than you have available timeslots, use option #1 above.
    9. Students are no longer "blind" to the fact that they somehow specially qualify for your study.

    How it works: You ask Sona to send the message to eligible participants. You can choose them based on these options: (1) Mean, sum or range of scores on a measure. Questions need to be in m/c format. (2) Specific responses to individual m/c questions (e.g., (Q1) right handed (Q2) women who (Q4) have children younger than three (Q5) who are divorced).

  3. Individually Recruit Subjects For Your Study by Manually Scheduling:
    1. Good for researchers running low base rate populations which also have scheduling difficulties
    2. Good for studies that require further screening on the telephone (scripts must be approved by the OPHS)
    3. Good for studies that require further explanation (e.g., explaining the experience/risks of being in the fMRI machine)
    4. Good for studies running pairs of subjects or other studies that always use manual sign up anyway
    5. Subjects lose anonymity. Address this risk in your protocol!
    6. Students often get lost, or confused about the day/time when they make appointments over the phone. Researchers MUST schedule these immediately in Sona so the student receives email confirmation and has the ability to cancel the study electronically.
    7. Do NOT use this option to contact participants you cannot reasonably run; if you have few credits, do not contact many participants in this way.

    How it works: When you are ready to recruit subjects, you receive an Excel spreadsheet of subjects' first names, login ids, phone number, and/or email address that they provide if they want to be contacted for follow up studies. You receive an Excel sheet with your measure and the login ID of the student so that you can match this to the call sheet. NOTE: the OPHS does not permit the call sheets to be reproduced in anyway. You cannot enter students' contact info into a database of any sort and it must be kept separate from their responses to your measures. You either call or email the students and use a script to relay information about the study to subjects. The script may in NO way use information regarding the study which is not present in SONA. For example, persuasive information to entice students to do your study is prohibited. You may NOT say things like, "you'll get a full hour credit but it's only a 45 minute study," or "this study is really fun." You can only provide factual information. You arrange a meeting time and sign them up manually in Sona. You can also allow them to sign themselves up by giving them a password (option #2 above) or having Sona only allow them to see your study if they qualify (option #1 above).

The Experimental Session

  1. Meeting your subjects
    1. Make sure your subjects know where to meet you. If you are running subjects on weekends or evenings, the building may be locked. Make sure you email crystal clear directions so they do not waste time looking for you.
    2. Make sure you are running YOUR subject. Ask the first name of the participant and make sure that person is the one who signed up for your study. It is not uncommon for researchers to run whoever is there "for a study" and then later find out that they ran someone else's subjects. This is problematic because the wrong person gets a penalty, and you may run a duplicate subject which if unidentified may render your data set flawed.
    3. Be respectful. Not all subjects are thrilled to be there, and not everyone will be in a great mood. Your job as the experimenter is to show appreciation for their participation and to be respectful of ALL subjects. NEVER comment about someone's age (e.g., "gee, you're way older than most students"), ethnicity or race, ("what are you anyway?") or other personal things about them. Complaints from students who feel they have been treated disrespectfully can JEOPARDIZE the whole human subjects pool.
    4. Be on time! Do not schedule subjects back to back if you might run over. Students need to know they can get to class/work/the bus/whatever on time. ALL subjects have the right to leave your study at any time; this includes their right to leave after the published study time is over. If your study runs over, you must also provide the subject with credit according to the amount of time the study actually took; the study officially "begins" when the subject arrives, so if you are late, you do not get the extra time. Finally, if you are late and the subject cannot complete the study by the published "end-time," you will be penalized as a no-show just like subjects are: The subject will get 1/2 credit from your account.
    5. POST SIGNS like "Wait here for XXStudy nameXX" to reassure your subjects that they are in the right place.
  2. No Shows and Being Late
    1. Experimenter No Shows: Students are expected to wait only 10 minutes for an experimenter. After 10 minutes, it is a "no show" and the student gets 50% of the study credit awarded to his or her account. The experimenter needs to manually award this credit. If you know at the outset that the student cannot complete the study on time, award 50% credit and let the student go immediately. Note also that "waiting 10 minutes" counts towards experiment time! You still need to finish on time even if you are late, or follow the procedures above. Finally, do not provide a student with a debriefing for the study if you do not show up! Even if you don't show up, they still have not participated, have not had the research experience, and thus cannot complete an RER for the study.
    2. Student No Shows: If a student does not show up or is late, they MUST be penalized. These penalties may be forgiven by the HSC, but researchers do NOT have the right or power to forgive students who do not show up. Word spreads fast in the dorms about penalties not being awarded and so the incidents of no shows increase quickly if they are not penalized. In the past, we have had terms with exorbitant numbers of no shows (over 50/week) when a few researchers do not take action. You may forgive a no-show, however, after a student actually completes the study. So, if the student is late but you have time, and the student finishes the study, no penalty. Or, if you have the credit and can reschedule, grant the penalty, and then remove the penalty and grant credit after the study is complete.
  3. Informed Consent:
    1. Informed consent must be provided at the beginning of a study, according to the researcher's OPHS-approved protocol. If a student opts not to sign the consent form, they may go immediately and do not receive credit OR penalty; penalties are for failing to show up, not for opting not to participate! Students must be allowed to leave gracefully and without prejudice. Do NOT attempt to dissuade someone from leaving!

    2. If a participant agrees to participate, signs a consent form and then decides to terminate his/her involvement for any reason: (1) the participant does NOT have to provide an explanation for termination; (2) s/he should be allowed to leave gracefully; (3) debriefing should be offered to the participant either immediately if feasible, or by appointment if there are other participants still present, and the written debriefing form should be offered immediately; (4) the participant should get credit for the amount of time in which s/he participated, rounded UP to the nearest half hour/half credit; (5) the PI should be notified as this "decline to participate" must be reported to the OPHS when the protocol is renewed.
  4. Directions/Protocol: Both the Human subjects protocol AND the individual study protocol must be strictly adhered to. In the event that there is a discrepancy between the two protocols, this should be worked out before data is collected, or as soon as the discrepancy comes to light.
  5. Unexpected Things: (equipment failure, subjects' inability to participate): If the experimental session needs to end suddenly due to some problem on the part of the experimenter OR some issue for the participant, in all cases participants should be: (1) given credit for the amount of time they participated, rounded up to the nearest half hour; (2) debriefed orally and given a written debriefing form.

Debriefing At the End of the Session:

  1. Debriefing must include a minimum 1 page description of the study written in language that subjects can understand. It should explain the purpose of the experiment. To ensure that research participation is an educational experience it is critical 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. All experiments should provide the participant with a general idea of what the experiment was about and why it is of importance (theoretically, practically, or both) and help participants understand the real-world applications of the study. For theoretical studies, researchers should help participants understand how the study contributes to psychological theory. Most students in the HSP have little or no training in psychology and/or linguistics, especially at the beginning of each term. Therefore, debriefing descriptions must be jargon-free and targeted to this audience. Finally, debriefings should contain sufficient information for students to be able to fill out an RER form; this last point must be verified by the HSC before the debriefing will be approved by the OPHS. The debriefing and RER answers can be submitted for HSC approval at http://www.uoregon.edu/~hscoord/rer-creation.html
  2. All debriefing forms must include directions for how to obtain further information about the study (i.e., name, phone number and office number of the experimenter AND the faculty advisor when the experimenter is a student, plus an email address that is checked at least once per business day).
  3. Allow 5 minutes for debriefing. This is usually 3 minutes for oral debriefing and 2 minutes for questions/answers. If your debriefing takes less time, you are probably not providing enough information. The 5 minute debriefing counts as part of the total time for the study: A 30 minute, ½ credit study is 25 minutes of informed consent and research participation and 5 minutes of debriefing. If the student elects to stay for a longer debriefing (i.e., if they have more than 2 minutes' worth of questions), time beyond the initial 5 minutes does not count toward research credit hours for the student.
  4. Students are entitled to leave on time. Therefore debriefing must begin 5 minutes before the end of the scheduled time slot. If the study is running late for any reason, the researcher must stop 5 minutes before the end of the scheduled time and either (1) begin debriefing; (2) negotiate with the student to stay late for additional credit.
  5. Online studies: In the case of online studies, debriefing will consist of a written debriefing form and contact information for the researcher, with an invitation to email questions to the researcher. The researcher should respond to questions in a timely manner. This debriefing should be easy to save or print, with text that can be copied so that participants can email the debriefing to themself if they choose.
  6. Amelioration. The experimenter must take steps to ensure that subjects leave the study at least as healthy and happy as when they entered (see "cost vs. benefit" and "no harm," above). Research assistants must be trained and prepared to deal with situations where participants may be upset, uncomfortable or disconcerted with the study to help ameliorate negative effects or connect the participant with resources for this amelioration, such as the counseling center or crisis line. For this reason, debriefings must also include contact information for the human subjects coordinator and for the OPHS, as participants may be uncomfortable raising some issues with the research assistants or the researcher. This information should be provided in the debriefing as this is a document which the participants are entreated to take home and thus will have access to after the study is complete.

After the debriefing: Follow-ups

  1. All debriefings must include information for how a participant may contact the researcher for further information about the study. This usually includes a telephone number and an email address. This email address should be the same as the PI for the study on Sona, and should be one that the PI pays attention to! Specifically, this email address must be read at least once per business day.
  2. The most common reason a participant will email the researcher is that they have lost their debriefing form. Especially near the RER deadlines, this can be quite a problem. As such, researchers should have their debriefing forms available to them so they can easily email a copy to participants.
  3. Occasionally, a participant will ask a specific question about the study. In this case, the researcher should respond truthfully! However, if the participant is asking one of the RER questions directly (or asking a question that is almost exactly the same), the researcher is encouraged to email the participant a copy of the debriefing and ask for clarification on the question. For example, "Hi, The debriefing for this study (attached) should answer your question. If it doesn't, however, could you be a little more specific about what your interest is in?" The HSC has verified that all of the RER questions (which are graded) can be answered based on information in the debriefing, so answering these questions directly may amount to helping a participant cheat.

Awarding Research Credits and Penalties:

  1. Experimenters record all research credits via Sona. Each ½ credit = 30 mins of participation or less. A 70 minute study (including the 5 minute debriefing) = 1 ½ credits. Studies that go longer than planned need to manually assign the additional (usually ½ credit) to the participant in Sona.
  2. 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 NOT given credit and NOT given a penalty.
  3. If a student who shows up for an experiment cannot be used for any reason (e.g., the equipment has failed or more subjects than are necessary for a group experiment have arrived), it is considered an "experimenter no-show." As such, 50% of 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.

    Additionally, you must avoid any hardship to the student. If it is very late in the term, or if it is the day before a Research Experience Report is due for their class, you should offer/arrange to (1) explain the study to them and what they would have done, and (2) fully debrief them. This enables them to complete their assignment which is worth class points. You may also decide to award FULL credit, if this occurs late in the term, and the 50% credit would be a hardship.
  4. If a student begins to participate in a study and needs to stop for any reason, e.g., they are uncomfortable with the study materials, they feel ill, or they cannot understand what is asked of them, they should be given credit for the amount of time they have participated, rounded up to the nearest half hour. In most cases this will likely be a ½ credit.
  5. For experiments involving multiple testing sessions the subject should receive credit by the end of the term for all research completed. This means that if after a particular session the subject declines to participate further (for example, by cancelling a future study), the credit(s) earned to that point have to be awarded by the end of the term. 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 1. given credit for the amount of time completed, and 2. given a "No Show" penalty for the amount of credit s/he would have earned in the missed session. If this disqualifies them from a second follow-up, the researcher should cancel the second follow-up when assigning the penalty.
  6. Students may cancel experiments via Sona by 6 p.m. they day before the study. It is a courtesy to accept cancellations after that time if they call you or email you directly. It is NOT up to you as to whether their reason for the late cancellation is legitimate! This is up to the HSC. However, you may try to reschedule for another time. If the student does not contact you by the time the experiment begins, however, you MUST assign a penalty, and have the student contact the HSC.
  7. Subject "No Shows." Experimenters should record a "No Show/Penalty" via Sona within 12 hours. The system will assign a 50% credit penalty for a "No Show" by reducing their number of "effective" credits.
  8. Researcher "No Shows." This will be handled by the researcher who no-shows. The researcher should grant 50% of the credit value of the study to the student. Students are to wait 10 minutes for the researcher before determining that it is an researcher "no show". It is wise to apologize to the student and explain why there was a no-show in order to maintain a spirit of good will and to show respect for students' time. You can send a short note by writing in the "comments" section in Sona when you award credit. This message is automatically emailed to the student with the credit notification.
  9. To cancel a session email the student through Sona and select the "cancel" button in Sona no later than 9 p.m. the night before the study is scheduled. If the researcher needs to cancel with less notice, he/she should email AND leave a note for the subject(s) on the laboratory door, AND give the participant 50% of the research credit for the study. The point of all of this is to not waste anybody's time!

Web-Based Experiments

  1. The Sona system has several features for conducting on-line, web-based experiments. You can conduct surveys using Sona's survey feature, or link Sona to your own URL. See the Sona system documentation for detailed instructions. Web-based experiments and surveys are subject to the same OPHS requirements as all other studies in the HSP, including informed consent and debriefing procedures. Features are upgraded about 3 times each year (usually August, February and May). Check the manual for upgrades or talk to the HS coordinator. There are several time saving features such as copying measures from others' surveys and copying section to section, so make sure you use Sona to its full ability. Sona cannot handle different conditions!

    2. You may also opt to run your own web survey on your own web server or someone else's. This may be set up in SONA as well, though you must have OPHS approval to do this as well, noting whose server will be used.

    Note that when you open timeslots for a web-based study, Sona will ask you for a "final completion deadline." This date is the LATEST a participant can get credit for completing the survey. As such, you should ensure that you are able to wait until that timepoint for data (if you want data TODAY, you should set up the deadline for the end of TODAY), that the timepoint occurs during the semester, and that you are fine with Sona automatically penalizing participants for not completing the survey by that date.

    General Survey — Short Web-Based Surveys

    Like the Prescreen, the General Survey is a means for a variety of researchers to pool their short measures into a single ½ credit/½ hour survey that is administered by the HS coordinator through Sona. General survey applications occur simultaneously with Prescreening applications. They may include up to four conditions, and are run online. The general survey counts as "a graduate student" when assigning credits, and as such only 20 participants per condition are guaranteed, though the General Survey will apply for reallocations just like other researchers would. Researchers who use the General Survey may also give their own credits to the General Survey in order to increase the participation count for everybody, by emailing the HSC.

    The General Survey data is provided to researchers at the end of the term, in a de-identified format. This is to say, researchers may not see any identifying information for the data they receive. If a researcher seeks to identify student data (for example, to connect General Survey responses to data collected in an online study), the researcher must obtain OPHS permission to do this (in the protocol for the lab data), as well as written consent by the student, allowing the researcher to access their general survey data using their name. Once this is complete, the researcher may, at the end of the term, send a list of identifying information (either full names or Sona IDs) of students who have consented to have their general survey data identified to the HSC. The HSC will then add the same identifying information to the researcher's General Survey data. This list MUST be provided to the HSC during finals week. All identifying information will be removed from the general survey data bank within two weeks of the end of the term; at this point, nobody has the ability to identify general survey data!

    Further Information:

    If you have any questions or comments regarding the information on this page, contact the Human Subjects Coordinator, hscoord@uoregon.edu.