Use of the Human Participant Pool Guidelines for Researchers
A second-year graduate student will be appointed as the participant pool coordinator at the beginning of each semester. This person will monitor the use of the pool, collect and distribute participant sign-ups, record credits, check to make sure that experimental summaries are turned in, and research and resolve student complaints.
By the end of the first week of each semester, faculty should give the pool coordinator a list including the names of studies they or their students/advisees plan to run during that semester and the experimenter(s), number of participants, number of credits, and approximate beginning date for each. Providing this information to the coordinator is a requirement for using the human participant pool. Additional requests may be made later in the semester if necessary, but will hold a lower priority level for pool access. The department head will work out an equitable distribution of participants with thesis projects given priority. Researchers with large participant requests may be asked to stagger their data collection throughout the semester. Faculty are responsible for ensuring that their student assistants understand and follow all pool procedures.
Researchers who have short questionnaires, pretests, or pilot studies may wish to consider pooling them together into a “mass testing” session to be organized by the pool coordinator. Students would receive one credit for each hour of participation, even though the session might include several short questionnaires from different researchers.
After IRB approval for a study has been received, you should contact the pool coordinator to get an experiment number. After you have your number, you may post your sign-up sheets on the bulletin board in the first floor Baker entryway. All studies should use this procedure. Passing questionnaires around classrooms for students to take home with them will no longer be allowed. Sign-up sheets should include a short description of the study, any special requirements for participants, and times and places for students to participate. Copies (both disk and paper) of the appropriate forms will be available from the pool coordinator. Sign-up sheets should be color-coded by researcher to allow for easier sorting by the pool coordinator. After posting the sign-ups, you may want to e-mail the introductory psychology instructors and pool coordinator so that they can let students know that there is a new study posted.
In addition, please leave a separate schedule of potential times/places for your study posted on the board and give a copy to Jeanne in the office. This will help students who have forgotten the location of the experiment or remembered it incorrectly find their way to the experimental session.
As students sign-up for your study, they will place their completed sign-up information in the lockbox near the board. The pool coordinator will collect these slips and distribute them to faculty mailboxes each day so that you will know who has signed up for your study.
Before students leave the experimental session, they should complete the student section of a participation form (see attached). The experimenters will fill in the rest of the information on the form. If any participants did not show up or give 24-hour notice, the experimenter may complete a form with their information and assign them negative credit. These forms will be used to assign credit for participation and should be turned in to the pool coordinator box at the end of each week.
Researchers are required to provide students with an educational debriefing. This information will ideally be given to participants at the completion of their participation and may be provided as a handout with information on the study and/or the area. If this is not possible, it should be mailed to participants or posted on a web site after the study is completed. Keep in mind that students will now be required to respond in writing to their participation. These questions will be on the back of the student portion of the sign-up sheet. Experimenters should provide adequate information during the debriefing so that students will be able to answer the questions in the experimental summary. Experimenters are also responsible for providing a copy of the informed consent form to all participants.
All experiments must be completed and participation forms turned in to the pool coordinator by 5:00 pm on the third to the last Friday of each semester.
A standing committee of faculty will continue to monitor the human participant credit system. Anyone with any suggestions or concerns should contact Helen Harton.
Pool procedures--Instructions for researchers. 1. Get IRB approval for your study. Allow at least 2 weeks for this step, and note that you should complete the NIH training module before submitting your protocol. Forms and information on what needs to be reviewed are on the Graduate College website.
2. At the beginning of the semester, let the Chair of the Human Participant Pool Committee know how many studies, credits, and participants, you anticipate using during the semester.
3. When you have IRB approval and are ready to collect data for a study, go to the PSPM system (linked from the psych dept. website) and log in as a researcher. Each faculty member has a unique user name and password. He/She should give those to his/her research assistants so they can also use the system.
4. Post the name and description of your study. If this is a study that you hadn't told the Chair of the Human Participant Pool Committee about before, you need to clear it with her/him first. If there are any requirements that participants must have, please indicate those. This will need to be approved by the Pool Coordinator (graduate student) before you can start posting times. Please allow 48 hours (longer over weekends, holidays) for this approval.
5. Time--if you have a short study, please talk to the Chair of the Human Participant Pool Committee or the Pool Coordinator about putting it together with someone else's study. In general, studies posted on the PSPM system should take at least 30 minutes, and usually longer.
6. The Pool Coordinator will send you an e-mail letting you know your study has been approved on the system. Then you can start entering times and room numbers for particular sessions. Please do not put up more slots than you actually need for your study.
7. You can log in at any time and see how many participants are signed up for a session. You can't remove (delete) a session once someone has signed up, so please make sure that your times are accurate as you enter them.
8. If you'd like, you can e-mail the intro instructors to let them know that new studies are posted. However, you should not go to the classes, try to recruit directly, or conduct studies during class time. (An exception would be studies that are evaluating educational practices in the classroom.)
9. Students can remove themselves from your study up to 24 hours ahead of time. After that point, they are locked in. If someone doesn't show up for a session that they had signed up for, they should receive a negative credit at your discretion.
10. Within 24 hours of the end of each session, log on to the system and post the credits. You'll get a list of all the names of those signed up and should indicate whether they showed up or not.
11. Periodically double check your sessions and make sure that all the credits have been entered.
What if's and other points: 1. If something happens and you have to cancel a session at the last minute (try really hard for this not to happen), you should have someone hang a sign-up sheet on the room door. If students show up, they should get credit for participating.
2. Students must be 18 or have parental permission to participate in any study. The parental permission has to be for each study individually.
3. If a student has a complaint about the study, he/she will contact the Pool Coordinator, who may come and discuss the issue with you before getting back to the student.
4. You should not recruit your own students for your studies. There are two ways to avoid this conflict of interest: 1) state on PSPM that a requirement of signing up for your study is that they not be in X's session; 2) have a research assistant run the study and enter all credits so that you don't know who participates (and make sure to announce to your students that you won't know).
5. All students who participate should be given a copy of the consent form to take with them (make sure they take them). This is their "receipt" for participating.
6. Researchers are required to provide students with an educational debriefing, even for surveys or low risk studies. This information will ideally be given to participants at the completion of their participation and may be provided as a handout with information on the study and/or the area. If this is not possible, it should be mailed to participants or posted on a web site after the study is completed. Researchers should also offer to answer (and answer) any questions participants may have.
7. Faculty are responsible for making sure that their assistants know, understand, and follow all pool procedures.8. There may be times where researchers are asked to wait before conducting a study. The department head will work out an equitable distribution of the available participant hours among researchers.