PSY100 Guidelines

[edit] Forms and Instructions

All forms and information about getting access to the PSY100 participant pool, or renewing an existing package can be found here:

All researchers must read the Principles and Procedures document on the website.

See the Debriefing Checklist for a list of everything you will need to include in your package.

The Psychology Reception desk on the 4th floor has a copy of the latest PSY100 textbook for referencing specific pages in the Debriefing Form.

Be very specific in the Debriefing Form (i.e. "the independent variable is this... the dependent variable is this", etc.)

IMPORTANT

Once a week, (by 5:00 Friday afternoon at the latest), fill out and turn in an Experiment Participation Report Form to participantreports@psych.utoronto.ca, being careful to record students’ names and numbers correctly. On the bottom of the Experiment Participation Report Form, indicate the number of students who were "walked through" the experiment or who participated but did not want their data used. Also indicate the names of students who were “no shows.”

Experiment Participation Report Forms must be submitted weekly, even if no one ran the study that week.

This means if you are running a study on Wednesday and no one else is running that study during the week, you should submit the form before you leave that day.

When your package is approved, you will be given an experiment number that you will use to sign into the PSY100 website:

(Note the password for the Anderson lab is ' elims ' backwards)

Experiment Information

Before you are able to open timeslots, you must enter experiment information, such as:

Contact info for the researchers: 416 978 1540 (ACL phone)
Location of the study (be very specific, e.g., "Room 604 in Sidney Smith Hall, Ground Floor")
Exclusionary criteria (e.g., can’t participate in this study if they have also completed study #32)
Duration and credit value of study (e.g., 1 hour & 1 credit)
Area of psychology (e.g., Cognitive)
You MUST indicate “Yes” as to whether there is an answering machine or your experiment will not show up on the website.

Posting Study Sessions

After you have set up the experiment you need to post online the study sessions, that is, the specific timeslots that students can sign up for.

Days and times of the sessions (most sessions are one hour)
Note how many students you will run in each session (e.g., one per hour; most studies have 1 to 4 students per session)

Viewing Study Sessions

After you post study sessions, view them and ensure all the information is correct
When a student has signed up you will see their name, student number and email
Check this page often to see if students have signed up for your study. As soon as students sign up you should then book space in the lab. If you check the page the night before the scheduled sessions and no one has signed up, and you know that you will not be checking the page again, DELETE THE SESSIONS. This will prevent students from signing up at 4am for a session at 10am that you assume no one has signed up for.
E-mail the students who have signed up a couple of days before to remind them of the time & location of the study. Tell them that if they can no longer make the session to delete themselves as soon as possible (this will hopefully allow other students to sign up in their place). This will also help reduce the number of no-shows.

Participants who do not show without giving a 12-hour advance notice are penalized.

Note that we prefer to get the maximum number of participants in each study, so email them and try to reschedule before you penalize them. Otherwise:

Delete no-shows from the PSY100 Website
Add their name & student number to the no-show location on the PSY100 Credit Sheet