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Results: Study Recruitment Issues |
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| Posted by: | Rusty McIntyre |
| Title/Position: | Assistant Professor |
| School/Organization: | Wayne State University |
| Sent to listserv of: | SPSP |
| Date posted: | October 29th, 2007 |
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Study recruitment survey
A few weeks back I posted a brief survey examining some issues that my colleagues and I (at Wayne State University) have experienced when recruiting participants for our research. Mostly these issues focused on not having enough bodies for research, study no-shows, time availability, and what to do about the trend of using online systems to conduct studies or surveys. Therefore, I asked five questions (see below) that in some way addressed these issues (we also asked these questions in a similar form to COGDOP, but received fewer replies). Gratefully, we received 26 respondents to the survey. These respondents were from a variety of institutions. Some were from small liberal-arts colleges, and others were from large research-based private or public universities.
The results below are a summary of the responses.
We asked:
(1) Do you require undergraduates in Introductory Psychology to participate
in research as subjects? Yes/No. If yes, how many are required?
The required/advised hours that schools used varied as a function of time (i.e., hours) or number of studies (with no differentiation of time). Most schools that indicated only a number requirement indicated that most studies were completed between 30 minutes to an hour. For these schools, I transformed the number requirements to half hour units. Thus, the number of hours that schools require may be somewhat conservative. Nonetheless, across the 26 respondents the average number of required hours was 3.70 (SD = 1.65; Min = 0, Max = 7 hours).
(2) Are undergraduates in Introductory Psychology permitted to do additional
hours on top of the required amount? Yes/No
Of the 26 respondents, 20 indicated that they did allow introductory psychology students to earn additional credit for participation above and beyond the requirements. The permitted data, however, is somewhat problematic in that many respondents indicated that the additional credit allotment is idiosyncratic to instructor and not necessary standardized within their school. Nonetheless, I used each respondent’s reply as an estimator for their school. On average, students were allowed to earn 2.06 hours of additional credit (SD = 2.68). No correlation between required and additional hours, however, was observed. The range was really interesting. Some, as indicated above, allowed for no additional credit. Others, however, allowed for up to 10 hours of extra-credit.
(3) Does your department currently use an online study tracker (i.e., Sona Systems, Experimatrix, etc.)? Yes/No
Of the respondents, 18 indicated using an online tracker. Of these respondents, all but one indicated that they used sona or experimatrix (now sona) for tracking study participation. The one respondent using a tracker other than sona had their computer & institutional technology folks design the software for them. Surprisingly, it seems that no other software for tracking studies/sign-ups is being used by those who had replied. Unfortunately, I did not survey for knowledge of other tracker programs available and thus cannot say if sona is the only game in town, or whether it is the best on the market. From these data all that can be said is that sona is the most widely used program from the respondents.
(4) Does your department currently allow students to earn research credit via online studies? Yes/No
Of the 26 respondents, 20 indicated that they allowed for online studies to be counted as experimental exercises for required or additional credit. The six other respondents indicated that they did not now allow online studies to be used.
(5) Is any distinction made between on-line vs. in-person participation
hours in your department (that is more or less credit for online participation)?
Finally, of the 20 respondents that allow for online credit only 6 indicated that they currently apply, or are considering, some distinction between online vs. laboratory studies. Many who said they make no distinction gave reasons like “none is needed,” “time is time,” and “experience is experience.” Those that did indicate a distinction favored either a limit on conducting online studies (i.e., only 2 allowed) or a benefit in doing in-lab studies (in credit earned, usually making labs worth twice the time involved).
These data will be particularly helpful for us at Wayne State University for how to advise instructors of introductory psychology classes on how much credit to use as required and as additional, and for how we cope with the increasing demands (by students and faculty) for research conducted via online systems.
I wish to thank all those who reply to the survey.
Sincerely,
Rusty B. McIntyre
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