BGSU - Psychology

Note: This page is for RESEARCHERS ONLY!
If you are a student wishing to serve as a research participant, click here.

If you are an INSTRUCTOR
seeking to notify the department of your class's participation
in the subject pool for the upcoming term, click here.

Psychology Subject Pool Guidelines
for Researchers at BGSU
and

Web Form
for Researchers to Request an Experimetrix Project Account

Dr. Richard Anderson, randers@bgsu.edu

GUIDELINES

All individuals conducting research involving human subjects at Bowling Green State University
must have human subjects training and approval of their research project by the BGSU Human
Subjects Review Board (HSRB). All HSRB application forms can be found online at
http://www.bgsu.edu/offices/orc/hsrb/.

What is Experimetrix?

Experimetrix is an online scheduling system for research studies maintained by the Bowling Green State University Psychology Department. Experimetrix is intended to provide students and
faculty with a method for recruiting participants for research projects including theses and dissertations. Experimetrix accounts provide researchers with the ability to (1) advertise a study to BGSU students electing to participate for class credit, (2) schedule research participants, and
(3) assign participation credit. The following guidelines apply to all researchers using Experimetrix.

Obtaining an Experimetrix Account

Individuals recruiting research participants from psychology classes must have an Experimetrix login and password for their study (or multiple accounts for multiple, simultaneous studies). If you would like an account, please complete the online form at the bottom of this page.

Setting up a Study

You can log into your Experimetrix account at http://www.experimetrix.com/bgsu/. When you visit the Experimetrix site, you will need to select Experimenter Area on the main page and then use the login and password given to you to access your account. Your Experimetrix login ID is the assigned number for your study. Once you’ve accessed your account, you can post details about your study, offer appointment time slots for research participation, and award credit for research participation. It is very important that all study descriptions (headers) visible to students provide:

• Contact information
• Time required
• Amount of credit
• HSRB approval number
• Short description of the study

Assigning Research Credit and Debriefing Participants

All psychology students who participate in research for extra credit or as part of their course requirement must be assigned credit on-line using Experimetrix. Participants must be assigned electronic credit regardless of whether they scheduled their research participation on-line or not (e.g., they completed a survey in class).

Participation credit is awarded in 0.5 hr increments. Students receive 0.5 credits for each 30 minutes of research participation (rounding up). For example, if your experiment lasts 40 minutes, then participants should receive 1 hour of participation credit; if your experiment lasts 10 minutes, then they should receive 0.5 credits.

Additionally, each participant must receive a receipt immediately upon completion of of his or her participation. Purple credit-slip receipts can be found in the main office. For internet based studies, the receipt may consist of a screen that the participant is asked to print-out for his/her own records. The receipt is not the primary method for tracking credit assignment. Rather, it is a backup that facilites the resolution of disputes.

It is the researcher’s responsibility to assign participation credit PROMPTLY (< 1 week). Students monitor their Experimetrix accounts like bank accounts and will be checking to see that they receive credit soon after they participate. Failure to assign credit promptly (or at all) is not fair to participants and will result in formal notification of the Human Subjects Review Board.

It is additionally each researcher’s responsibility to provide participants with a debriefing at the end of participation. Note that in some courses the instructor requires participants to write-up a description of the study in which they participated. Researchers are obligated to provide such information as part of the debriefing. However, instructors should be aware that research projects vary widely in their designs and procedures, and that students should not be asked to write-up information that is impertinant or unavailable with respect to a particular study. For example, some studies do not have independent variables, are exploratory rather than prediction-driven, or require that specific hypotheses be witheld from participants until the entire study is completed.

Etiquette and Additional Information

Access to the Psychology Subject Pool is made possible by the willingness of instructors to require research participation or offer extra credit in their classes. It is the researchers’ responsibility to help make research participation a good experience for both the student and the
instructor. At any given time, there may be a large number of researchers accessing the subject pool in order to collect data for various projects including theses and dissertations. To help your colleagues collect the data they need for their projects, researchers should not collect more data than is necessary to achieve sufficient power. To help with planning, each researcher will be asked to specify the number of credits for their study when they submit an application for an Experimetrix account.

Researchers should make every attempt to use the on-line system for scheduling research participants for the following reason. Participants are required to make a course selection in Experimetrix prior to signing up for study time slots so that their name will appear in the end of the semester by-course reports. Thus, students that fail to make a course selection do not appear in the by-course reports; as a result, instructors are forced to sift through a long list of names to find the missing student. Permitting a walk-in participant or otherwise not using the online scheduling system (1) bypasses the requirement for the student to make a course selection prior to signing up and (2) produces additional work for instructors.

Note that Experimetrix does not retain any information about individual participants other than a list of names and email addresses of the individuals who have signed up for accounts. Do not rely on Experimetrix to provide/collect demographic information about participants.

IMPORTANT

Throughout the term, you must must assign participants' Experimetrix credits on at least a weekly basis.

Researchers must have all credit entered into the system by 5:00 pm on the Friday of the last day of classes. This is before the official end of the term, and before the start of final exams week. See http://www.bgsu.edu/offices/registrar/

Research participants (subjects) must have made all of their course selections and assigned all of their credits to courses by 11:59 pm of the Saturday before final exams week.

Be especially vigilant regarding the end of the first 6-week summer session.

Final credit-summary reports will be made available to instructors by noon of the first day of final exams week.