PARTICIPANT RECRUITMENT POLICY
Approved 11-06-2009 (Last Revised 11-30-2012)
The following items pertain to participant recruitment and have been adopted by the faculty:
1. All faculty who provide credit to be applied toward the research requirement in a Psychology class must follow the outlined procedures for using the psychology participant recruitment system.
2. Participants will be awarded Experiential Learning Credits (ELC’s) for their participation in experiments. Each 30-minutes of experimental experience will be worth one ELC.
3. Each semester the research coordinator will assess faculty ELC needs and report those needs to the department chair.
4. Based upon faculty needs, a required number of ELC’s will be set at the beginning of each semester for Psychology 1200 (not to exceed 8 ELC’s); this requirement should be consistent across all General Psychology classes. A suggested number for all 2000 level classes will also be established. Both will be announced to faculty.
5. Only ASU psychology department faculty, students supervised by faculty or outside faculty directly involved with collaborative efforts with ASU psychology department faculty will be allowed to have access to the departmental participant recruitment system.
6. A total of one-half of participants’ credits may be awarded through online-studies.
7. ELC’s should be recorded within one-week of student participation. All ELC’s should be recorded by the end of reading day.
ADDENDUM TO RECRUITMENT POLICY
Approved 9-25-2015
The following items pertain to using the SONA participant recruitment system and the department subject pool and have been adopted by the faculty:
1. As per the IRB, if a researcher wants to allow students under 18 to participate in a given study, the researcher must indicate this when specifying the population to be studied in the IRB application.
2. For studies that will grant more than 1 ELC to participants: the researcher who submits the request for a study to be approved (so it can be listed in SONA) must submit a brief (two- to three-sentence) justification for the number of ELCs being granted (e.g., the study/survey takes X amount of time to complete).
3. Study eligibility requirements on SONA should indicate whether students need to be 18 to participate.
4. RAs should keep lab doors open before the start of a timeslot, and before closing the door and beginning the study, they should check outside the lab for participants (who may be waiting in another part of the hallway).
5. When a researcher has to cancel a timeslot within 24 hours of that timeslot (something that participants cannot do), the participant should be notified via email that he or she may sign up for another timeslot if he or she wishes to do so. If he or she does not wish to sign up for
another timeslot, he or she will receive credit for the previously scheduled timeslot.
6. When a researcher has to cancel a timeslot during the last two weeks of classes, the participant should receive credit (because participants may not be able to find another opportunity to participate in a study), as well as an email indicating that he or she will receive credit.
7. When a researcher does not show up for his or her timeslot, all participants scheduled for that timeslot should be notified via email that they may sign up for another timeslot if they wish to do so. If they do not wish to sign up for another timeslot, they will receive credit for the
timeslot in question. In these cases, the participants should contact the study’s P.I. directly by logging into SONA, navigating to the list of all studies, clicking the link for the study in which they were scheduled to participate, and emailing the person listed as the principal investigator. In this email, the participant should include the name of the study and the time and date of the scheduled appointment. The participant should also CC the SONA administrator on the email (that email address is linked at the bottom of every SONA web page).
8. SONA study-approval requests made by anyone other than a P.I. must be accompanied by evidence of IRB review (i.e., IRB study number) or IRB exempt status.