We have a new on-line system for participation. This system will allow instructors to easily track credit and have access to information about all available research studies. The primary difference inherent in this system is that students need to create an account for themselves on the system. This process is easy and detailed on the student information page. I have created an account for each faculty member.
Amount of Credit
As
of Fall 2004, we standardized the crediting for each course – participation
is worth 5% of the total course grade for all Psych 104 courses.
There were several issues in the past regarding research recruitment for studies that were not part of the research participation pool and did not have human subjects approval. This caused student confusion and a lot of extra work for everyone. To avoid problems, I request that if researchers want to come to your class to recruit or talk about their studies, please send them to me first so that I can verify that they are in the pool, have Human Subjects approval, etc.
Extra Credit
I encourage faculty to allow students to participate in more than 8 units (2 hours) for extra credit. Please remember, the first two hours of participation are required. Extra credit should be for participation over those two hours.
If
you are teaching another course and want to allow students extra credit, the
pool coordinator can set this up for you so that your students may sign up
on-line and have credit tracked automatically. Please let the pool coordinator
know if you want to do this so your course may be added to the system.
Each
researcher records the names of student participants and their instructors and
inputs the information into the on-line crediting system. Crediting occurs
within 48 hours of participation. Credit information is constantly updated
(rather than every two weeks as under the old system). You can download a file
indicating each student's credit information.
Students who fail to show up for one study may either:
· A. Complete additional time equal to the time for the study they missed (e.g., a student who misses a ½ hour appointment is now required to complete 2.5 hours) or
· B. complete the alternative assignment (see below).
· Students choosing Option B lose all participation credit and must complete the same level of alternative assignment(s) as students who did not participate in research at all.
Students who fail to show up for two studies lose all participation credit and must complete the alternative assignment. These students will have their accounts disabled.
These penalties are administered automatically by the participation pool software.
Students who have legitimate excuses may apply to have these penalties voided.
For students who do not want to participate in research (or are younger than 18 years old), instructors must provide an alternate assignment (note: this is a key ethical requirement mandated by APA guidelines). A typical assignment could be a summary of an article referenced in their textbook or an article from a recent issue of a peer-reviewed journal relevant to the topics covered in the course. Any assignment that takes roughly the same amount of time as participation would be acceptable.
Making
the experience educational
In
addition to debriefing (when appropriate), we are working toward a system to
make results of completed studies readily available. The pool web page currently
includes abstracts of completed work. Other strategies, such as a departmental
research fair are long-term goals.
In-class
data collection options (e.g., researchers coming to a class and passing out
questionnaires) does not count toward pool credit. To avoid confusion regarding
crediting, I request that you do not allow researchers to collect data in-class.