LAW AND PSYCHOLOGY PROCEDURES FOR
RUNNING SESSIONS
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In
projects that make use of the undergraduate participant pool there are some
procedures that need to
be followed to ensure that participants receive credit for their
participation in the experiment. This page describes those policies and
procedures. It is important that you understand these procedures before
you begin running participants.
Important
General Comment In conducting research in the lab
you will be interacting with a number of different people. You will be
interacting with other members of the lab. You will be interacting with
the staff in the Psychology Office. You will be interacting with the
Howell's Office. You will be interacting with other faculty
members. If you work with children you will be interacting with them,
their parents and their teachers. Always remember that in doing so you
are representing this lab, Dr. Lampinen, the
Psychology Department and the University. That means that you should be
polite, you should present yourself professionally, and you should treat the
people you are interacting with respectfully.
Keep in mind that they are taking time out of their busy days to help
you and treat them accordingly. Our Lab Goal: To have the faculty, staff, and students we interact
with regard us as the most friendly, polite and competent lab around.
Everyone has to be committed to achieving that goal! Reserving
a Room The lab has a number of different
rooms available to us for running participants. These include our own two lab
rooms as well as room 113 Memorial Hall (a room shared by the Psychology
Department as a whole) as well as other rooms that can also be reserved for
running sessions. Keys for the lab rooms are on rings in Dr. Lampinen’s mailbox. It's important that after those
keys are used that they be immediately returned to the Psychology office in
case other people need to use them. Early in the semester we will
determine the space needs of each group and decide how to share the rooms we
have access to. The project leaders who are sharing a room should meet early
in the semester to discuss exactly how the room will be scheduled and create
a room reservation sheet to be posted on the door. Be aware that other people
need those rooms too, so don't reserve the rooms because you think you
might be running sessions during those times. Only reserve the rooms
for times you will be running participants.
It is also possible to reserve
room 113 for the purpose of running participants. A room reservation calendar
is available in the Psychology Department Office for that purpose. Talk to
your project leader for more details about how to reserve that room. Please be security
conscious. Make sure after you complete your session that the doors are
locked. Using
Experimetrix to Create Online Signup Sheets The Psychology Department has
recently moved to a web-based experiment sign up system called Experimetrix.
Students will sign up for experiments online and we will create online
signup sheets for our experiments. To start scheduling sessions the
project leader (after getting Dr. Lampinen's
approval) should contact the department's participant
pool coordinator by email and politely asks her or him to create an
experiment. To make it easier for him to pick out, put
"Experiment Request" in the subject line of the email
message. The participant pool coordinator will need the following
information to create an experiment:
The participant pool coordinator
will record the information and provide you with an experiment number
and password. It is important for you to keep in mind that in Experimetrix, experiments are referred to be experiment
numbers, not names. So, for instance, when Experimetrix
sends out reminder emails to participants about their sessions, it will
remind them of their experiment number. It is important to know your
experiment number, because students will be looking for a particular
experiment number they have signed up for. This link
provides technical details of how the project leader can set up their
experiment, schedule sessions, and award credits. For some experiments
you may call students to ask them to participate and then hand schedule them
into the Experimetrix system. Keep in mind, you can only do this if they have already registered
with Experimetrix. When you call use good phone
manners; be friendly, upbeat and professional. If the student agrees to
be in the study, be sure to provide them with all the relevant information,
when the session is scheduled, where the session is being held, the
experiment number and your name and a contact phone number and/or email
address in case they need to get a hold of you. Running
a Session Please make sure that the experimenter
who is running participants arrives at their session early enough to set up
the necessary materials in advance. When you meet students, be sure to ask
them if they are here for your experiment, because students sometimes go to
the wrong experiment room. Say something like, "Are you here for
Experiment #17?". Participant names
should be compared to the list of participants who are signed up for the
experiment. Experimetrix allows you to set a lead
time during which participants can no longer sign up for the experiment (we
typically set our lead time at two hours, but check with your project
leader). The experimenter should be
friendly, polite and professional. They should treat the student participants
the way they would want to be treated if they were a participant in an
experiment. This is not only the right thing to do, but the quality of the
data you end up with is likely to be better if the participants are in a
positive frame of mind about the experiment. The experimenter should also
exude an air of confidence and competence. If the students running the
experiment seem disorganized or like they don't know what they're doing,
participants will not take the experiment seriously and the data you collect
will be negatively affected. If your protocol allows it, allow
participants five minutes beyond the scheduled start time to arrive. After
you decide to start, put a sign up on the door saying "Experiment In
Progress/Do Not Disturb". It is very important that this sign be removed
from the door after your session is over. Otherwise, people will just
start to ignore the signs. After you have started the experiment, do
not allow anyone else to come in. If someone knocks on the door, as quietly
as you can, step outside and tell the person that you cannot run them because
the experiment has already started but that they can feel to sign up for
another session at another time.
Once you decide to start the
session hand out the consent forms and say something like "The following
tells you about the experiment. Please read it carefully and sign it if you
agree to participate." At this point the experimenter should follow the
detailed protocol that has been prepared. Once the session is completed
follow the debriefing procedures outlined in the protocol and assign credit
as described below. Assigning
Credit Participants receive a half credit
for every half hour of participation. For participants to receive their
credit you to assign them credit with Experimetrix.
It is very important that you keep accurate records of the students
you have run so that they receive the credit they deserve. Technical details of how to use Experimetrix to assign credit are provided here.
Second, you need to enter credit in Experimetrix. It is our policy that
every lab group needs to enter credits within 48 hours of the student’s
participation in the experiment.. You will also be required to keep
track of no shows. Before assigning a "no-show" make sure that the subject didn't cancel first.
Participants may cancel using Experimetrix, in
which case the person's name will be automatically removed from the list for
that session. Participants may also cancel by emailing you at the email
address you provide on the sign up page or by calling the Psychology office.
Check the call-in box outside the Psychology Office to make sure a
participant did not call in an excuse that will prevent a no show. If
someone has called in an excuse before the session was scheduled, do not
assign them a no show. Be careful not to
assign no shows to students who have canceled, it creates bad feelings and
unnecessary stress for the students. |