James Madison University Wordmark

Department of Psychology

Participant Pool Instructions for Experimenters

Please keep in mind that while the students are curious about your work, they are often somewhat nervous about being "guinea pigs". Your compliance with the following instructions and your considerate treatment of student volunteers will ensure that the participant pool works well. Your study should be a positive learning experience for them. Participants from the Department of Psychology participant pool must be 18 years of age or older on the day of your experiment. Experimenters are encouraged to ask participants if they are 18 or older. Exclude participants who are minors, because they cannot legally consent to participate in experiments.

Step 1: Complete mandatory JMU training in Protection of Human Participants.

JMU requires that all personnel who have any role in research involving humans must complete a web-based training package. More information is available at: http://www.jmu.edu/sponsprog/irb.html .

Step 2: Seek approval for your project from the JMU Institutional Review Board (IRB)

All research applications must be submitted to the Institutional Review Board for approval of human participant research. Procedures for IRB approval and necessary forms can be found http://www.jmu.edu/sponsprog/irb.html. Following IRB approval, contact the Participant Pool Coordinator:

Dale Bostwick
E-MAIL: SubjectPool@jmu.edu
Office: Miller 1170
Phone: 568-8010

Before scheduling participants, you must submit a copy of the IRB approval form, IRB proposal, including the informed consent form, and the debriefing form, to the Participant Pool Coordinator.

Step 3: Obtaining Materials

Upon receipt of your IRB approval, IRB proposal, including the informed consent and debriefing forms, the Participant Pool Coordinator will issue passwords, information on accessing your study, and written instructions regarding how to schedule experiments using the Sona Systems web site.

Step 4: Posting Materials

You post your "Sign-Up Sheets" on the web using the Sona Systems software. Students will receive an e-mail reminder about their participation appointments in advance of the session. As an experimenter, you can view a list of students who have agreed to participate in each of your sessions.

Step 5: Experiment Session

  1. Take attendance. You will need to know who attended or did not attend your session to complete your responsibility later to record attendance on Sona Systems.
  2. Have every participant complete the informed consent form and give one copy of the form to the student participant.
  3. Run your protocol.
  4. Following the experiment, debrief participants.
    Please remember that students earn credit for showing up. Participation is voluntary. Should they be unable or unwilling to complete the experiment, they still earn credit.

Step 6: Follow-up

Experimenters are required to enter attendance credits. Within 24 hours of each experimental session, use Sona Systems to record attendance and penalties for no-shows. This must be done promptly since students can check a credit earned for experiments online and their records must be accurate. Please report any problems to the Participant Pool Coordinator as soon as they occur.

ATTENTION ALL RESEARCHERS USING THE PARTICIPANT POOL

We require students to cancel their experiment appointments at least 24 hours prior to a session; so it is only fair that we require the same advance notice when experimenters cancel. If an experimenter needs to cancel an experimental session less than 24 hours prior to the planned session time, any student who has signed up for that experiment will earn 1 participation credit even though their session is cancelled. If an experiment needs to be cancelled within 24 hours of the time of session, DO NOT CANCEL THE SESSION USING Sona Systems or the information we need to properly assign credit will be lost. Instead, contact the Participant Pool Coordinator (SubjectPool@jmu.edu) for assistance.

Additional Information

Please review the procedure for cancellation found in the student instructions. If a student should contact you with a question or problem concerning credit or cancellation, it would be helpful if you forwarded that call or e-mail to the Participant Pool Coordinator  568-8010 or -(SubjectPool@jmu.edu).

Researchers making use of the participant pool should turn in a brief summary (abstracts are perfect) of their study/research projects upon project completion. These descriptions should be turned in to the Participant Pool Coordinator as MS Word files for uploading to the participant pool website.

You can generate an email from Sona Systems to notify participants of changes in your study. After logging into Sona Systems and selecting your study, choose Contact Participants from the menu at the bottom of the page. Emails for individual participants are also listed on Sona Systems.