System Basics
In the system, you create studies. Each study may have a number of timeslots, which are the times you plan to run the study. Participants can sign up for the timeslots by viewing a list of studies and available timeslots. You can grant or revoke credit to participants after the session occurs.
Web-Based (Online) Studies
If enabled, you may set up studies that are web-based (online). These studies may be set up internally in the system (online internal survey study) or outside the system (online external study). The options will vary depending on how your system is configured.
There are a few things to note about web-based studies:
- Once you indicate to the system that the study is web-based, you will not be able to change it to where it is no longer web-based. However, you can copy the study and convert it to a lab study (if it was an online external study).
- Web-based studies are typically set up so that there is one timeslot. That timeslot contains the maximum number of participants you would like to participate, and the last date and time when they can participate (this is often at the end of the term). It is not recommended that you set up multiple timeslots for web-based studies. Though the system will support it, it confuses participants. It is acceptable to have multiple timeslots, where only one study is active at a time. For example, one could have had a deadline date at the end of the previous semester (currently in the past), while the current timeslot has a deadline date at the end of the current semester (i.e., in the future).
- It is generally presumed that participants will participate in an online study shortly after they sign up. In this case, the system will expect you to grant credit to them soon after they sign up. If you are creating an online survey within the system, credit will be granted automatically, immediately after the participant completes the survey.
- In the case of an external web study, if you are using a survey product like Qualtrics, SurveyMonkey, LimeSurvey, SurveyGizmo, etc., then you may be able to set up credit granting, where it occurs automatically as soon as the participant completes the study. See External Study Credit Granting for more information.
Videoconference Studies
If you would like to conduct your study over videoconference (Zoom, WebEx, etc.), set up the study as a standard in-person study. Videoconferences are set up at the timeslot-level and not study-level, and appear as an option when adding a timeslot for a standard study. For additional flexibility, you can set up some timeslots as videoconference and others as a typical in-person location.
When setting up a videoconference timeslot, you will need to supply the URL of the online meeting. You may use the same URL for multiple timeslots. We recommend configuring the videoconference (on the provider side) so that there is a “waiting room” and you can admit participants into the meeting. By using the waiting room feature, you can control who can enter the meeting, and it can also alleviate the need for a password. If you set up a password to join the meeting, be sure to provide it to participants either by email or in the study details.
Participants will have access to the URL 10 minutes before the appointment, and will continue to have access until the timeslot is finished. For example, if the timeslot is scheduled for 9:00 – 9:30, they will have access to the URL from 8:50 – 9:30.
Participants may access the URL from the following sources:
- In the confirmation email sent immediately after they sign up for the study.
- In the reminder email send the day before their appointment.
- From the My Schedule page when they log in to the system.
The URL that participants receive is not a direct link to the videoconference URL, but instead a link to the system, which then runs some checks and sends the participant to the correct URL if it is now available for them, and otherwise they will receive a message stating when the videoconference will be available.
Multi-Part Lab Studies
You may create a multi-part lab study in the system, up to 4 parts. Often these are studies involving memory research, where the participant must return a specified number of days after the previous session. When creating a study, you may specify the day range for the each part of the study (e.g. 7 to 10 days after the previous part). Participants are required to sign up for all parts at the same time, to reduce the chance of forgetting to sign up for all parts. Each part of a multi-part study may have a different credit or payment value, and duration, but each part must be the same compensation type. All parts must be for credit or all parts must be for compensation. The system also supports multi-part online studies (see Multi-Part Online Studies). If you have a study where one part is in-person and the other part is online, you will need to set up two separate studies and link them using pre-requisites.
With multi-part lab studies, you may specify that each part of the study must be scheduled to take place at exactly the same time as the previous part, or at any time on the dates that are within the specified number of days after the previous part. You may also specify that the next part take place on the same day as the previous part, by setting the day separation to 0 days. In that case, the system will ensure the next part takes place on the same day, but after the previous part.
You should ensure that there are enough available timeslots for all parts of the study or participants will be prevented from signing up for the study. Participants may cancel any part of their sign-up if necessary. If they cancel the one part, all subsequent parts are automatically cancelled as well. If they cancel any part other than the first part, you will need to manually sign them up (if you are allowed to do so) to participate in the cancelled parts of the study at a later date. You may also ask the administrator to handle this.
If you grant a no-show for the one part of a multi-part study, the subsequent parts of that participant’s sign-up will not be cancelled automatically. However, you will be reminded of the situation in case you would like to cancel the subsequent parts. The cancellation is not automatic as there are some situations where automatic cancellation is not desirable.
Multi-Part Lab Study Configuration Scenarios
Listed below are some common scenarios and how to configure them in the system. The example used below is for a two-part study for simplicity, but would apply just as well to studies with more parts.
Scenario | Configuration (Part 2) |
Second part to take place a week later, at any time during that day. | Scheduling Range: 7 and 7 Scheduling Leniency: No |
Second part to take place three days later, at exactly same the same time as part 1. | Scheduling Range: 3 and 3 Scheduling Leniency: Yes |
Second part to take place one to two weeks later, at any time during the day. | Scheduling Range: 7 and 14 Scheduling Leniency: No |
Second part to take place later on the same day as the first part. | Scheduling Range: 0 and 0 Scheduling Leniency: No |
The system will enforce the configuration for the each part in terms of ensuring participants only sign up for timeslots that meet the multi-part study restrictions. As the researcher, you also have additional control in deciding which timeslots to create for each part of the study. You want to ensure that there are sufficient timeslots for each part. For example, if you have a two-part study set up so the second part must occur exactly one day after the first part, and you have set up the Part 1 timeslots on Monday, then ensure you have some Part 2 timeslots set up on Tuesday. Participants will have trouble signing up for the Monday timeslots for the first part because there is no corresponding timeslot for the second part to sign up for.
Multi-Part Online Studies
You may create a multi-part online study in the system, up to 4 parts. Often these are studies involving memory research, where the participant must participate a certain number of hours or days after the previous part.
There are a few constraints to be aware of when setting up this type of study:
- This feature is only supported with online external (web) studies, not the internal online survey feature.
- The Study URL for each part of the study must be unique, so the system is clear about which URL applies to which part of the study. For example, the URL for part 1 and part 2 can’t point to the same Qualtrics URL. If you intend to ask the same questions in each part of the study, make a copy of the survey so each part has a unique URL.
- The time separation between each part is based on when the participant was granted credit (participation marked) for the previous part. For this reason, setting up the External Study Credit Granting feature is highly recommended since then the participation is marked automatically. When setting up this integration, be aware the crediting URL is also unique to each part of the study.
- When specifying time separation between each part of the study, it is based on hours and not days, but you may specify large numbers like 168 hours for a 7-day separation. You specify the number of hours after the previous was completed that the next part will become available, and for how many hours it will remain available. We recommend having it available for at least 12 hours, so participants have enough time to access the study.
- You may use different survey products for each part (e.g. Qualtrics for part 1, SurveyMonkey for part 2), or the same product for each part.
- When setting up timeslots, the timeslot for part 1 functions as the participation deadline for just that part, similar to with single-part online external studies, and it effectively functions as the deadline when participants can start the process of completing all parts of the study (though in practice they will all sign up a lot earlier). You also need to set up timeslots for the other parts of the study. For simplicity, you can set the timeslots for the other parts to the same date and time as part 1.
Participants are given access to the URL for each part of the study at the appropriate time. They are provided a URL that does not point directly to the Study URL, but instead to the system, which then redirects them to the correct URL after first checking it is OK to send them to that URL (based on the time separation between parts).
Participants receive a link to each part of the study in the confirmation email after they sign up for the study. They also receive an email with a link to the next part, as soon as they are given credit for the previous part, and that email details when the next part will be available. They also receive an email reminder if the next part became available in the last 24 hours and is still available. This reminder is sent daily when the usual study appointment reminders are sent. They can also log in to the system and go to My Schedule to access the URL.
When creating a study, you may specify the scheduling range for the each part of the study in hours (e.g. 72 hours after the previous part, and available for 24 hours). Participants are required to sign up for all parts at the same time, to reduce the chance of forgetting to sign up for all parts. Each part of a multi-part study may have a different credit or payment value, and duration, but each part must be the same compensation type. All parts must be for credit or all parts must be for compensation. If you have a study where one part is in-person and the other part is online, you will need to set up two separate studies and link them using pre-requisites.
You should ensure all parts of the study have a timeslot available, or participants will be prevented from signing up for the study. For online studies, since the timeslot date functions as a participation deadline, it’s often easiest to just set up a single timeslot for each part all with the same date, time, and capacity.
Participants may cancel any part of their sign-up if necessary. If they cancel the one part, all subsequent parts are automatically cancelled as well. If they cancel any part other than the first part, you will need to manually sign them up (if you are allowed to do so) to participate in the cancelled parts of the study at a later date. You may also ask the administrator to handle this.
If you grant a no-show for the one part of a multi-part study, the subsequent parts of that participant’s sign-up will not be cancelled automatically. However, you will be reminded of the situation in case you would like to cancel the subsequent parts. The cancellation is not automatic as there are some situations where automatic cancellation is not desirable.
Multi-Part Online Study Configuration Scenarios
Listed below are some common scenarios and how to configure them in the system. The example used below is for a two-part study for simplicity, but would apply just as well to studies with more parts.
Scenario | Scheduling Range Configuration (Part 2) |
Second part to take place a week later, and be available for 24 hours. | Available After: 168 hours Available For: 24 hours |
Second part to take place immediately after completing first part, and be available for 12 hours. | Available After: 0 hours Available For: 12 hours |
Adding a Study
To add a study, choose the Add New Study option from the top toolbar. You will have the option to pick from four possible types of studies. You may need to specify if the study is for credit or payment. Please choose these options carefully as you will not be able to change them later.
After you choose the study type, you will see a form asking for more information. You will need to fill out a number of fields, which are explained in the following table. Some of the fields listed below may not appear depending on how your system is configured, and the type of study you selected. All fields in the Basic Study Information section must be filled out unless otherwise noted.
Basic Study Information | |
Field | Explanation |
Study Name | A short name for the study. This is how the study is identified throughout the system. Most systems are configured so studies show in a random order to participants (choose Your Studies on the toolbar and it will state at the bottom of the resulting page if they are displayed in random order), so there is no advantage in choosing a study name that might put it at the top of an alphabetical list. You should consult with your administrator if there is a naming convention to be followed when naming studies. Study names must be unique, and you will be prevented from adding a study if there is already another study in the system with the same name. A study name may be up to 100 characters in length. |
Brief Abstract | This is a short one or two line description of the study. This short description will be displayed to participants when they view the entire list of studies, so it may be beneficial to list the most pertinent details here. Studies configured for payment often have the compensation information included in this section, particularly if the payment varies based on certain outcomes. This field may be optional, and can be up to 255 characters in length. |
Detailed Description | This can be a more long-form description about the study, and it will show if a participants clicks on the study to get more information before they sign up. You may include basic HTML in this area (ask your IT department for help if you are unsure of how to do this). This field may be optional, and can be up to 15,000 characters in length. |
Eligibility Requirements | If there are any restrictions on who may or may not participate (for instance, only those who are left-handed), list them here. Otherwise, leave the field as-is. If you list any restrictions, these will be displayed on the list of studies when participants view a list of all available studies. Note the system does not enforce these restrictions, but it is expected that a participant will only sign up for a study in which they are qualified, as they would otherwise fail to receive credit. In most cases, you will leave this field as-is and set prescreen participation restrictions instead (those are enforced automatically), which you can do after you add the study. This field may be up to 245 characters in length. |
Duration | The amount of time, in minutes, that each study session will take. If you are setting up a multi-part study, then there will be the option to specify the duration for each part of the study. For online studies, this should be an estimate of how long participants can expect the study to take, so that they can plan accordingly. |
Credits | Enter the number of credits a participant will earn for the study. A value of 0 is acceptable and may be desired in cases where the study is part of a set of studies, and only the final study is credit-earning. The credit value specified must be evenly divisible by the credit increment specified. For example, if the increment is 0.5, then the study can have credit values like 1 and 1.5, but not 0.75. If you are setting up a multi-part study, there will be options to enter credit values for each part of the study. The system will compute the total credit value of the study automatically. After a study has sign-ups, you may not change the credit value of the study. However, the administrator can still change the credit value of a study with pending sign-ups. If this is done, be sure to notify participants with pending sign-ups of the change, as the system will not notify them automatically. A study may not be changed between a study for credit and for payment, after it has been created. |
Timeslot Usage Limit | Depending on how your system is configured, you may see an item that specifies the maximum number of study session hours available to this study. The administrator sets this value, and is the only one who can change it. To determine the current session usage for a study, go to the Add A Timeslot page for the study, or to the Timeslot Usage Summary. |
Preparation | Enter any advanced preparation a participant must do here (e.g. “do not eat 2 hours before session”). If there are no preparation requirements, leave this field blank. |
Researcher(s) | Select the researcher for this study. Most likely, this is you, and your name will automatically be selected. If you are a researcher, you may not remove yourself as the researcher (the P.I. for the study, as well as the administrator can change the researcher). Depending on how your system is configured, you may be able to specify multiple researchers for a study. If you specify multiple researchers, each researcher has full control over the study. The selection box lists only users who are researchers. |
Principal Investigator | Select the Principal Investigator for this study. The person you select will have full access to the study. If you see this option, then you must select a P.I. The selection box lists only users who are principal investigators. |
IRB Approval Code | Enter the IRB approval code here. This field is displayed to the administrator to help them keep track of studies. Depending on how your system is configured, this field may be required. If it is required, then only the administrator can change the IRB approval code once it has been entered. |
IRB Approval Expiration Date | The date when the IRB approval expires. This field may not appear, depending on how your system is configured. If it does appear, you must provide a valid expiration date. The system will prevent you from adding new timeslots to take place after this date, and your study will become inactive (not approved and thus not visible to participants) after this date. You may not make a study active if the IRB approval has expired. Only the administrator can change the IRB approval expiration date once it has been entered. This is the reason why it defaults to blank to force you to choose a date. You may specify a date up to 5 years in the future. |
Approved? | Select Yes if this study should show up on the list of studies that participants might sign up for. Ensure you have received the necessary approvals to run the study before choosing Yes. A study must be Approved and Active to show up on the list of studies that participants may sign up for. If you select No, the study will not be visible to participants. Some systems are configured in a way that only the administrator can approve a study. If that is the case, you should contact the administrator when you are ready to make the study visible to participants (a form is provided on the page to do so). As a researcher, you can always make an approved study invisible to participants (by making it not approved), but you may need the administrator to make it visible again. In addition, if you change key items about the study, specifically the name or descriptions, the study will automatically be made invisible to participants until the administrator reapproves it (depending on how your system is configured). The reason for this is that many IRBs approve very specific language for study names and descriptions, so the administrator needs to ensure the study is in proper compliance. |
Email Approval Notice? (Visible to administrators only) | This Yes/No option will appear if the administrator is adding or updating the study that is not already approved. If they select Yes to Email Approval Notice and they approve the study (set Approved to Yes) at the same time, then an email will be sent to all researchers for the study, notifying them that their study was just approved. |
Active Study? | Select Yes if this study is in progress. You must select Yes and the study must be Approved if you want the study to available for participants to sign up for. If a study is Not Approved but is Active, then it does not show up to participants on the listing of studies, but it is accessible through other links if the participant has participated in it before and are viewing their participation history (in case the participant has follow-up questions about the study). It will also show up on the study information page (for an individual study) where it is listed as a pre-requisite or disqualifier for a study. The reason to select No is if the study is being kept for historical purposes, but should not show up on the list of studies participants can sign up for. Often, this is done so the system can enforce pre-requisites where the inactive study is a pre-requisite for an active study. |
Advanced Settings | |
Field | Explanation |
Pre-Requisites | If there are studies a participant must participate in before participating in your study, choose them here. You may select multiple studies. You may specify that participants must have participated in at least one, if not all of the studies specified. The system will handle enforcement of the pre-requisites in a strict or lenient fashion, depending on how your system is configured. In strict enforcement mode, the participant must have received credit for (participated in) the pre-requisite studies. In lenient enforcement mode, the participant must only be scheduled to participate in the pre-requisite studies (it is presumed that they will go on to complete the pre-requisite studies). You can ask your administrator how this is configured, if it is of concern. If your system is in lenient enforcement mode and a participant cancels a necessary pre-requisite for your study (they are warned of this), and your study is configured so that the researcher will receive notifications of cancellations or sign-ups, then the researcher will receive notification of the pre-requisite problem and can contact the participant if necessary. Depending on how your system is configured (Pre-Requisite/Disqualifier Display setting), participants may or may not see which studies you have specified as pre-requisites when they view your study. |
Disqualifiers | If there are any studies that a participant must not have participated in, please select them here. You may select multiple studies. The system will handle enforcements of the restriction during the sign-up process. If a participant has signed up for, or participated in, at least one of the studies specified as a disqualifier, then they will not be eligible to sign up for your study. Depending on how your system is configured (Pre-Requisite/Disqualifier Display setting), participants may or may not see which studies you have specified as disqualifiers when they view your study. |
Course Restrictions | If you would only like participants enrolled in certain courses to participate in your study, select the eligible courses here. Participants who are not in at least one of the courses you selected will not see the study when they view the list of available studies. You may choose No Restrictions if you would like to make the study available to participants in any course. There is a limit to how many courses can be listed as course restrictions for a study, and the limit is somewhere between 60 and 80 courses. The limit is varied depending on a few factors, and the system will simply not save the course restrictions for any courses that would take it over the limit. Note that course restrictions do not function as a disqualifier but rather as a qualifier. For example, if a participant is in both Course A and Course B, and the study is restricted to only those in Course A, the participant is eligible because they are in Course A, despite the fact Course B is not listed as a course restriction. In addition, using the same example above, the participant may assign the credit from the study to any of their courses, including those courses not listed in the course restriction (Course B in this example). Course Restrictions function solely to qualify participants for a study, and not to restrict their ability to assign credits to courses. |
Age Restrictions | If you would like to limit to participants within a certain age range, you can specify it here, and participants who do not qualify will not see the study at all. For lab studies, the age restriction is enforced based on the date of the timeslot. For example, if a study has a minimum age limit of 18, and a participant is currently 17 but will turn 18 next week, the system will allow them to sign up for any timeslots that will take place after they have turned 18. For web studies, the age restriction is enforced based on their age at the time they sign up for the study. |
Invitation Code | If you would like to have a special sign-up password for this study, enter it here. This is known as an invitation code and applies just for this study. Participants must know the invitation code to sign up for this study. This is often used in cases where the researcher wants to personally select participants, so the researcher only provides the invitation code to the desired participants. Invitation codes are not case sensitive, and are in no way connected to any passwords users use to log in to the system. If you do not need an invitation code, leave this field blank. |
Is this a web-based study? | This will list if the study is an online study, and the type of online study. This setting cannot be changed after a study is created. |
Should participants be identified only by a unique, random ID code? | If enabled, then researchers will not see participant names, but instead an ID code to identify them. This setting only applies for online studies, and only if ID codes aren’t already enabled system-wide by the administrator. For external web studies, this setting is useful primarily in conjunction with placing %SURVEY_CODE% in the Study URL. Once this setting is enabled (to show ID codes), it cannot be changed back to showing names again, even if you remove %SURVEY_CODE% from the Study URL. |
Study URL | The URL (web address, usually starting with https://) for your study. This is only required for web-based studies administered outside the system. If you are setting up a web-based study outside the system and would like the system to pass a unique identifier in the URL so that you may easily identify participants and even have the system grant credit automatically, add the text %SURVEY_CODE% in the URL where you would like the identifier to be placed. This feature is most commonly used with online survey products like Qualtrics, SurveyMonkey, LimeSurvey, SurveyGizmo, and similar products. This is discussed in further detail in the Web-Based (Online) Studies section of this documentation. If you are setting up a multi-part online study, you will need to specify the URL for each part of the study, and the URLs should be unique. |
Study URL Display (single-part external web studies only) | If set to Yes, then participants may still access the Study URL even after they have been marked as having participated in the study. If set to No, the URL will not be available to them. In all cases for external web studies, the URL will not be displayed until they have signed up for the study. Regardless of this setting, the URL will not be displayed after the timeslot is in the past. |
Participant Sign-Up Deadline | Enter the deadline date (before the study is scheduled to occur) that is the last possible date a participant may be allowed to sign up, in whole hours. |
Should the Researcher receive an email notification when a participant signs up or cancels? | If set to Yes, the researcher for this study will receive an email notification whenever a participant signs up or cancels their sign-up for this study. The email notification will be sent to an email address based on the information the researcher has provided. See the Email Address Options section of this documentation for more information on how the email address is determined. Emails will contain the first 50 characters of the study name as part of the subject line in order to make it easier to sort the emails within an email program. If set to Yes, researchers will also receive a notification if the system is in lenient pre-requisite enforcement mode; and a participant cancels a study that was a pre-requisite for the current study. Read the section on Pre-Requisites in this table for more information about this situation. Emails are sent to all researchers specified for the study, unless a specific researcher is assigned to the timeslot that the email notification is being sent about. See Timeslots Linked to Specific Researchers for more information. |
Researchers at Timeslot-Level | If set to Yes, it will be possible (but not required) to assign a specific researcher from the list of researchers for the study to a specific timeslot. If set to No, then it is presumed that all researchers assigned to the study are responsible for all timeslots. See Timeslots Linked to a Specific Researcher for more information. This option only appears if the system is configured to allow multiple researchers per study. |
Automatic Credit Granting | If set to Yes, timeslots that are more than a specified number of hours old and still in the Awaiting Action state will be changed to a credit grant. The check for timeslots in this situation is made only once per day. If an automatic credit grant is done, you may still change it later if necessary. For online external web studies, the credit grant will take place (the specified number of hours) after the timeslot (participation deadline) has occurred (as opposed to being based on when the participant signed up. This feature is generally not useful in this situation. The option will not appear for online survey studies (within the system) because credit granting generally occurs automatically, immediately after the participant completes the survey. |
Can a participant sign up for this study more than once? | If you would like to allow participants to sign up (and receive credit) for your study more than once (at different times), choose Yes. Otherwise, choose No. If No is chosen, participants may only sign up for the study more than once if they had previously failed to show up for the study (a no-show). |
Shared Comments | This is an optional area where you may enter any comments or notes about the study. These are visible to any researchers and PIs in the system, but not to participants. This field is useful if you want to make the technique used in the study visible to other researchers, so they can set your study as a disqualifier if necessary. This field can be up to 1,000 characters in length. |
Private Comments | This is an optional area where you may enter any comments or notes about the study. These are only visible to the researchers (and PI) for this study. These are not visible to participants or to other researchers or PIs in the system. This field can be up to 1,000 characters in length. |
Research Alternative? | If set to Yes, then this study is considered a research alternative study. For various reasons, some participants may be restricted to participate in regular studies (typically, for accruing too many unexcused no-shows or being unable to consent), meaning that they can only sign up for research alternative studies. Only an administrator may change this value (the default is No). |
Total Payment (paid studies only) | Enter the amount of total compensation for the study, typically the sum of the payment values for each part. The system cannot compute this automatically since it is possible to enter non-numeric values (e.g., “Amazon Gift Card”) in the other payment fields. |
Part X Scheduling Range | For multi-part standard studies: Specify the number of days (as a range) after the previous part is scheduled, that this part should be scheduled. The range may be the same value (e.g. “between 7 and 7 days”) if desired, but must be a whole number. See Multi-Part Lab Studies for more information. For multi-part online studies: Specify the number of hours after the participant receives credit (participation is marked) that this part will become available, and for how many hours it will remain available. The value can be a large number like 168 hours for 1 week, but it must be a whole number. See Multi-Part Online Studies for more information. |
Part X Scheduling Leniency (multi-part standard studies only) | In some cases, you may want to ensure that the participant schedules the next part of the study to take place at exactly the same time (on a different date) as the previous part. If so, choose Yes for this option. If there is some flexibility to sign up any time within the Part X Scheduling range, choose No for this option. |
Once you have filled out the appropriate information, save it and the system will be updated immediately with the information. If you would like to add participation restrictions based on prescreen responses, you can do so when you update the study (see Prescreen Participation Restrictions). Otherwise, your next step is to add timeslots (sessions). See the Working with Timeslots section of this documentation for more information.
Updating a Study
You may update any of your studies at any time. To do so, choose My Studies from the top toolbar and you will see a list of your studies. Click on the desired study, and choose the Change Study Information link.
You will see a form similar to the one you used to add the study. A few options may no longer be editable depending on the status of the study (e.g., if participants have already signed up for it). The fields shown are all the same as when you added the study. See the Adding a Study section of this documentation for an explanation of those fields.
The changes you make will take effect immediately after they are saved. When changes are made, if administrator re-approval is required before a study is made visible to participants, then you should contact the administrator to request re-approval once you have made all your changes. Changing the following fields may require a re-approval: study name, brief abstract, detailed description, eligibility requirements (the text field, not specific restrictions like prescreen restrictions, study pre-requisites/disqualifiers, or course restrictions), duration, preparation and credit value (for credit studies only). There will be a notice on the Change Study Information to warn if re-approval may be required. The system will also notify you after making changes if the study is now in need of re-approval. If re-approval is required and you are ready to request such approval, you may use the option to send such a request via the system, which is the same function you would have used to request initial study approval. If you need to change the credit value for a study and there is no option to do so, this means the study already has at least one participant signed up for it. You cannot change the credit value when a study is in this situation because there is no way to handle past credits for the same study (e.g. should old credit grants for the same study be adjusted to reflect the new credit value or be
kept the same?). If the study is nearing the end of its run and variable credit granting is enabled, then the easiest solution is to grant the new credit value to participants who sign up in the future. If you prefer that the credit value be changed for the entire study, contact the administrator who can make that change for you. Note that if the study’s credit value is changed while there are pending sign-ups, those participants are not notified of this change. You will need to notify those participants of the change in credit value if necessary.
Deleting a Study
You may delete a study only if there are no pending sign-ups (awaiting action) or active (non-zero) credits linked to it. If you need to delete a study that already has pending sign-ups or active credit grants, a better option may be to make it Inactive if you do not want it to be visible to participants.
If you want to delete a study that has sign-ups and are unable to do so, please contact the administrator. The administrator can delete a study with sign-ups, but only if the sign-ups are all without credit values (this usually occurs when study participation history from a previous semester was retained, but credits were zeroed out). If the study has sign-ups where the sign-ups have (non-zero) credit values linked to them, then the administrator cannot delete the study until all those credit grants are changed to a 0 value (or the participants for the sign-ups are deleted). This restriction is to ensure that the credit count for participants and where they have earned credits is accurate. This also means that the studies that contributed to their credit earnings must be kept intact.
To delete a study, choose My Studies from the top toolbar and click on the desired study. Then choose the Delete Study option. You will see a confirmation page. Choose Yes (at the bottom of the page) to delete the study.
Once a study is deleted it cannot be restored, so use this feature very carefully. If you delete an online survey study, the survey and all data collected will also be deleted.
Timeslot Usage Summary
When viewing your study, the timeslot usage summary will be available. This gives some basic information about timeslot utilization in the past and in the future, as well as some basic no-show information. It also gives information on timeslots for the study by location (if the study is not an online survey study or external web study) and by researcher (if the study is configured to allow researchers to be assigned to specific timeslots).
For credit studies, the system also provides a summary of how many credits were granted. This summary accurately computes credit usage, taking into account any variable credit grants (if Variable Credit Granting is enabled in System Settings). This summary is useful in cases where some participants may have received credit in a different amount than the study’s listed credit value.
If timeslot usage limits are enabled, the system will provide an estimate of how many timeslots can be added. Note that if the study is a multi-part study, it will estimate based on allocating the entire limit to the each part (estimates for each part are provided). However in practice, it’s more likely a researcher will want to add timeslots to all parts of the study. This should be taken into account when viewing these estimates, especially if each part of a multipart study has a different duration.
Requesting More Timeslots
If you have reached your timeslot usage limit, you will be unable to add additional timeslots to your study. To submit a request to increase your timeslot usage limit, please email sereslab@uci.edu with the following information:
1. Your name
2. Study Name and IRB Approval Code HS# (if applicable)
3. Number of additional timeslots you are requesting to add
4. Max number of participants your study has been approved to recruit
Download Participant List
The download participant list feature allows you to download or easily print a list of all participants for the study, including when they signed up for the study. You can restrict this list based on date range of the timeslots, and also on participation status.
If Participant Date of Birth Requirement is enabled in your system, so that the system collects date of birth from participants, then their age will be included to the nearest tenth decimal place (e.g. 20.2 years old). For lab studies, the age is computed based on their age on the date of the timeslot. For web studies, age is computed based on the current date (the date you run this report). Administrators who run this report will see full date of birth (not just age) for each participant. Date of birth is excluded from the data researchers receive to reduce the risk of identity theft.
The download also contains the date a participant signed up for the study, and in the case of external web studies and videoconference studies, it also shows the date they first clicked the link to participate in the study online.
Bulk Mail Summary
The system tracks whenever any type of bulk email is sent (by a user) related to the study. This includes inviting qualified participants based on the study’s prescreen participation restrictions, or contacting those who have already signed up for the study. This information is kept for 6 months and is tracked to ensure that all users follow the generally accepted Internet practices for responsible use of email. The administrator also has access to this information.
Prescreen Participation Restrictions
If enabled on your system, the system might contain an online prescreen that participants may (or must, depending on your system configuration) complete. You may place participation restrictions on your study based on prescreen responses. Participants are unaware that such restrictions are placed on the study. These restrictions are never listed to them. If they do not qualify to participate in a study because they do not meet the prescreen participation restrictions, then the study will not be shown to them. This is important to note – participants never know why a study was or was not shown to them, because they are unaware of the prescreen restrictions.
You may restrict a study on any question or questions on the prescreen that allowed for a multiple-choice answer where only one choice could be selected. You may also restrict a study based on a computed section sum or average score for a participant, if the prescreen was set up in such a manner. You may restrict to one choice or many choices for any question. If you restrict on multiple questions, it is the same as a logical “AND.” For example, if you setup the prescreen restrictions so that participants must have answered “Yes” to the question “Do you wear glasses?” question and “Blue” or “Grey” to “What color are your eyes”, then they must meet both requirements to participate. In other words, only participants who wear glasses and have either blue or grey eyes are eligible.
There is no support for a logical “OR” restriction across multiple questions. The restrictions are inclusive, meaning that if you select a choice as a restriction, participants must have answered at least one of the choices selected for each question that is part of the restriction in order to see and participate in the study. This is as opposed to being exclusive where checking the choice as a restriction would exclude them from participation.
To set participation restrictions, view (do not choose edit) your study and choose View/Modify Restrictions. You will see a list of eligible questions that you may use for your restrictions. If the study already has some restrictions, those will be checked. You will see how many participants currently meet the restrictions. Choose the questions you would like to restrict upon (and keep the existing checked restrictions checked, unless you want to remove that restriction), and click on the Set Restrictions button. On the subsequent page, you can select each value that is acceptable for each question you have chosen. Once you have selected all the acceptable values, save your changes and they will take effect immediately. It is important to note that if you change the restrictions, it will not remove the study sign-ups for participants who qualified under the previous set of restrictions as restrictions are enforced at the time the participant signs up for the study. For this reason, you should decide on your restrictions before making the study available to participants.
If you have restriction requirements where you would like to restrict participation to a percentage of the population (e.g. the responses that were chosen by the top 25% of people), but you are unsure which responses meet this requirement, you can use the Prescreen Response Analysis feature to determine the valid responses. See Prescreen Response Analysis for more information. You may also use Analyzing Prescreen Responses to get an idea of how many participants are potential candidates for participation in your study, based on a specified set of restrictions.
Inviting Qualified Participants to a Study
While viewing the list of prescreen restrictions currently set for a study and the number of participants who meet those restrictions, you may see the option to Invite Qualified Participants. Using this option, you are able to craft an email to be sent to all qualified participants. You can choose to exclude those who have already signed up for, or participated in any studies you specify. This disqualifier list will be pre-populated based on any disqualifiers already set for the study. The system will automatically exclude all participants who have participated or are signed up for the current study (no-shows are not excluded though, since they may sign up again). If the study is not a research alternative study, the system will also automatically exclude participants with limited accounts, as they are ineligible to participate in studies not marked as a research alternative study.
The system will pre-fill the email text with useful information like the name of the study and how many timeslots are currently open. If you include the text %FIRST_NAME%, %LAST_NAME%, or %USERNAME% in the email text, the system will substitute it with the recipient’s first name, last name, or username. Note this text must be in upper case and surrounded by % symbols.
You cannot include attachments in the email, so if you have a document you would like to include, you should post it on some other website and provide a link to the document in the email that you send.
There is also a Direct Study Link URL displayed for your convenience, so you can easily copy and paste it into your message. See Advertising Your Study for more information.
If you have set participation restrictions for the study based on course enrollment and/or age, those restrictions will be taken into consideration (i.e. abided by) when determining which participants receive the email.
If the study invitation email feature is enabled on your system, and some participants have opted out of receiving study invitation emails, then they will also be excluded from the mailing.
There is also an option to choose a random percentage from the overall list of matching participants to email. It is important to note that the system only keeps track of who was emailed for 6 weeks, and you must specifically choose a past emailing group to exclude that group. If you do not choose to exclude a group emailed in the past, then some who received it before may receive it again. In other words, choosing a random 30% will not exclude those previously emailed when determining the 30%, unless you specifically choose to exclude them.
The Sender address on the email will be the administrator’s email address, which is done to prevent the email from being blocked by junk email filters. The “Reply To” address of the email will be that of the user who is actually sending the email. When a participant chooses to reply to the email, the reply will be sent to that “Reply To” email address.
There is an option to specify a delay in sending the email, based on the number of hours from when the emailing option is used. This is useful if you want to target a certain time of day (e.g., during the evenings) when the email will be sent. The emails are generated at the time you use the emailing function, but are stored on the server’s outgoing email queue until the specified sending time. They cannot be removed from the queue once this emailing function is used.
The study must be approved in order to use this feature, if Study Approval is enabled.
In some cases, the administrator may have imposed a limit on how many participants may be emailed. This is often done to prevent abuse of the system. Such cases include when researchers invite too large a number of participants, which is not in accordance with the generally accepted Internet principles for sending email. If there is such a limit, the system will look at the number of participants the researcher plans to email and block the sending of the email entirely, if the number of participants is over the limit. To get around this limitation, the researcher can further restrict whom they plan to send the email to (perhaps choosing a smaller random percentage of users, or more closely defined prescreen participation restrictions). The researcher may also ask the administrator to send the email for them, as the administrator is not subject to such limitations. Regardless, any use of this bulk email function will be logged. That information will be kept for approximately 6 months. The administrator can also pull up a report of how many emails a specific researcher has sent, so it is wise to not abuse this feature. In addition, Sona Systems reserves the right to temporarily remove the right to log in from a researcher if there are verifiable reports of abuse of this feature. Typically before doing so, the administrator will be notified by Sona Systems as it is preferred to have the administrator deal with such problems.
Viewing Your Studies
To view your studies (and not the studies of others), choose the My Studies option on the top toolbar. The system will list all your studies in alphabetical order by study name, then will be grouped by studies that are active and inactive. You may use the tabs along the top to toggle between viewing all your studies, to viewing only those that are active or inactive.
Participant Study View
If you would like to see how your study appears when participants view it, find your study and choose the Participant Study View option. This will show exactly how the study appears to participants. With the exception of a participant who views a study, next to each pre-requisite and disqualifier study is a status indicator about whether they have met that requirement. In Participant Study View, the pre-requisite and disqualifier studies are listed, but there is no status indicator next to each study in the list.
If for some reason you think your study is not visible to participants, it may be due to various restrictions you have set on the study; such as prescreen participation restrictions where too few (or none) of the participants in the pool qualify. You can ask the administrator to use the Check Study Configuration tool (available to them when they view your study) to provide advice on why your study may or may not be visible to participants. Administrators there also have an option to input a specific participant to see if that participant would qualify for your study.
Study Modification Log
To view changes made to the study, you can access the Study Modification Log in the Study Menu for your study. It shows details about changes made to the study information, prescreen restrictions, stud credit value, and timeslot deletions. The system logs when the change was made, by which user, and their computer IP address. Data is retained for approximately 12 months.
Copying a Study
To make a copy of a study, go to the study you would like to copy, and choose the Copy Study option in the Study Menu for your study. Copying a study will copy all the study configuration, including any prescreen restrictions and other participation restrictions, but it will not copy the timeslots or study sign-ups. You may have the option to change the study compensation type (paid or credit study) and study type (convert a standard to online study and vice versa) for the new study.
Viewing Other Studies
To view all studies that are visible to participants, choose the All Studies option from the top toolbar.
You will first see a list of all Active studies. These studies will show up to participants on the list of available studies. The next group of studies (if there are any) is Inactive studies. These will not show up on the list of available studies (to participants) but participants are able to access information about these individual studies on links from the page that tracks their progress (if they have participated in the study) or if another study has the Inactive study listed as a pre-requisite or disqualifier.
Online External Studies
Online external studies are online studies that are not hosted within the system, but instead reside on another website. This is different from online internal survey studies (detailed later in this documentation), where an online survey is set up directly in the system and no other website is involved.
When it comes to granting credit (marking participation), by far the most popular method is to set up External Study Credit Granting, so that the participation is marked immediately and automatically, as soon as the participant finishes the study. If you are using one of the many products where this feature is supported, it is strongly recommended to use that. This is especially important in the case of multi-part online studies, because the time separation between parts is based on when participation was marked.
Otherwise, you may want to develop a method of linking the participant’s sign-up in the system to your online study, so you know who to grant credit to. One way to do this is to ask for the participant’s name (or some other identifying information) that will make it easy to locate their sign-up within the system and grant them credit once they have completed your online study. Another method of tracking, which reduces the chance of human error, is to use the Survey Code feature described later in this section.
Note that if External Study Credit Granting is not used, the system will not automatically grant credit once the participant has finished the study. The reason behind this is the system does not know when something occurred on a website outside the system. In this case, researchers should routinely login and grant credit as necessary.
External Study Credit Granting
With External Study Credit Granting, a participant can receive credit as soon as they finish the online external study. This is accomplished by having the external study notify the system that the participant has completed the study and thus deserves credit.
If you are using a popular commercial product like Qualtrics, SurveyMonkey, Inquisit and many others, then skip this section and go to one of the following sections that provide specific instructions for each product. In addition, it may be easier to use the online integration instructions available for each product at http://www.sona-systems.com/help instead of this documentation. The reason is that those products may have been updated since this documentation was produced, and the online integration instructions are updated more frequently.
What follows in this section is a general description of the integration process if you are not using one of the commercial survey products listed in separate instructions below. If you are using one of those products, then skip to the relevant section (or the online integration instructions) instead.
Accessing the completion URL for the study sends the notification to the system. A properly configured study will have up to two Completion URLs:
- Client-Side Completion URL: If this URL is loaded, the participant will receive credit. Typically, the participant clicking on this link in their browser, or the participant being redirected to this link after completing the study, would load this URL. This is the most commonly used method for a commercial survey product where there is not already a built-in integration.
- Server-Side Completion URL: This URL would typically be loaded by the external study (not clicked on by the end-user participant) and is a server-to-server communication between the external study and the system. The results are returned in XML format and may be parsed by the external study. This method is used when you have full control over the external study, like if it is programmed from a Perl script. It also provides more control and security than the client-side method.
You should use only one completion URL to achieve credit granting. For most commercial online survey products, and if you are not familiar with programming, the client-side completion URL is likely the most appropriate option. To avoid confusion, the system will only display the client-side completion URL if a commercial survey product is being used and is known to support only the client-side completion URL.
To see the completion URLs for your study, first you need to ensure the study is set up correctly as an online external study. Then, enter the URL for the external site into the Study URL field in Change Study Information and save your changes. Next, click on Change Study Information again and modify the Study URL to include %SURVEY_CODE% in the URL in the appropriate place. If you entered the URL for a commercial product like SurveyMonkey, Qualtrics, SurveyGizmo, Unipark, or Inquisit, then the system will display help text just below the URL with a suggestion for how to include this. Once you save your changes the completion URLs should now appear on the resulting study information page. In short, the completion URLs will appear as long as there is %SURVEY_CODE% anywhere in the Study URL.
The client-side completion URL will look like this:
https://yourschool.sona-systems.com/webstudy_credit.aspx?experiment_id=123&credit_token=9185d436e5f94b1581b0918162f6d7e8&survey_code=XXXX
The server-side completion URL will look like this (if displayed):
https://yourschool.sona-systems.com/services/SonaAPI.svc/WebstudyCredit?experiment_id=123&credit_token=9185d436e5f94b1581b0918162f6d7e8&survey_code=XXXX
In the example above, the XXXX at the end is to show where the survey code number should be placed (in place of XXXX) by the external study website.
The next step is you’ll need to configure the online external study to receive the survey code number from the system at the start of the study, and also to load one of the completion URLs at the end of the study. You will need to replace XXXX with the survey code number and pass that to the system in the completion URL. Because this involves configuring the external study, which is not part of the system, how this is accomplished depends on the external study software. Usually it involves setting up the survey code number as some type of variable that is passed via the URL, and then configuring a redirect URL at the end of the study to be loaded, with this variable in the URL.
As this is a complicated feature, the best method to test it is to actually log in to the system as a fake participant. The entire credit granting process is not possible to test as a researcher, as researchers cannot sign up for studies. To ensure other (real) participants do not sign up for the study while you are testing it, add an Invitation Code to the study (you can remove it later).
The configuration directions for some popular survey products are below, based on information from those vendors.
Testing External Study Credit Granting
Once you have external study credit granting set up, you will want to test it before going live with real participants. The best way to do this is to test with a real participant account. During testing, you can set up the study with an Invitation Code (password) so real participants can’t sign up for it while you do your testing.
It’s also possible to test while logged in as a non-participant (like a researcher). Go to https://www.sona-systems.com/help/integration_test.aspx for information on how to test and troubleshoot any problems with credit granting.
The three most common problems when setting up external credit granting are:
- Study is set up as wrong type in our system. Be sure to set it up as an Online External Study (where participants are not given the URL until after they sign up).
- The URL participants get sent to at the end of the survey is incorrect. This URL is unique for each study in our system. So if you are re-using an old survey and created a new study in our system, be sure to update the URLs in that survey for crediting.
- Typo when adding in %SURVEY_CODE% to the Study URL field. Read the instructions carefully, as it needs to be set up exactly as specified or it won’t work.
External Credit Granting – Why some participants are still showing as “uncredited timeslots”
If you have confirmed External Credit Granting is set up correctly (some participants are successfully getting credit) there are a couple of reasons why other participants still might show as “uncredited timeslots”:
- The participant might not have completed the survey yet. While most participants complete a survey when they sign up, some will wait, and have until the participation deadline you set up to complete. Once your participation deadline has passed, you can assume these “uncredited timeslots” are participants who never completed your survey, and you can mark them as an “unexcused no-show” (unless #2 below applies to them).
- The participant might not have clicked the link at the end of the survey to route them back to Sona to receive credit. If they got to the end of the survey and closed the window thinking they were done, they will not be routed back to Sona and will not receive credit for completing the survey (even if it shows they completed it on your survey platform). We suggest including a note at the beginning and/or end of your survey, reminding participants to be sure to click through to the reroute so they are granted credit. If you have participants who fall into this category you will likely hear from them because they will wonder why they haven’t received credit yet. While it is often difficult to match their Sona account with your completed surveys on your survey platform, researchers will often take the word of the participant and grant them credit.
External Study Credit Granting with SurveyMonkey
For the latest instructions on integration with SurveyMonkey, along with detailed screenshots, go to https://www.sona-systems.com/help/surveymonkey.aspx. The product may change more often than we update our documentation, so the help page will contain the very latest information.
External Study Credit Granting with Qualtrics
For the latest instructions on integration with Qualtrics, along with detailed screenshots, go to https://www.sona-systems.com/help/qualtrics.aspx.The product may change more often than we update our documentation, so the help page will contain the very latest information.
External Study Credit Granting with REDCap
For the latest instructions on integration with REDCap, along with detailed screenshots, go to https://www.sona-systems.com/help/redcap.aspx. The product may change more often than we update our documentation, so the help page will contain the very latest information.
External Study Credit Granting with SurveyGizmo
For the latest instructions on integration with SurveyGizmo, along with detailed screenshots, go to https://www.sona-systems.com/help/surveygizmo.aspx. The product may change more often than we update our documentation, so the help page will contain the very latest information.
External Study Credit Granting with LimeSurvey
For the latest instructions on integration with LimeSurvey, along with detailed screenshots, go to https://www.sona-systems.com/help/limesurvey.aspx. The product may change more often than we update our documentation, so the help page will contain the very latest information.
External Study Credit Granting with Inquisit
For the latest instructions on integration with Inquisit, along with detailed screenshots, go to https://www.sona-systems.com/help/inquisit.aspx. The product may change more often than we update our documentation, so the help page will contain the very latest information.
External Study Credit Granting with Unipark
For the latest instructions on integration with Unipark, along with detailed screenshots, go to https://www.sona-systems.com/help/unipark.aspx. The product may change more often than we update our documentation, so the help page will contain the very latest information.
External Study Credit Granting with QuestionPro
For the latest instructions on integration with QuestionPro, along with detailed screenshots, go to https://www.sona-systems.com/help/questionpro.aspx. The product may change more often than we update our documentation, so the help page will contain the very latest information.
External Study Credit Granting with Fluidsurveys
For the latest instructions on integration with Fluidsurveys, along with detailed screenshots, go to https://www.sona-systems.com/help/fluidsurveys.aspx. The product may change more often than we update our documentation, so the help page will contain the very latest information.
External Study Credit Granting with SurveyLab
For the latest instructions on integration with SurveyLab, along with detailed screenshots, go to http://www.sona-systems.com/help/mysurveylab.aspx. The product may change more often than we update our documentation, so the help page will contain the very latest information.
External Study Credit Granting with Gorilla
For the latest instructions on integration with Gorilla surveys, along with detailed screenshots, go to http://www.sona-systems.com/help/gorillasc.aspx. The product may change more often than we update our documentation, so the help page will contain the very latest information.
External Study Credit Granting with Cognition Lab
For the latest instructions on integration with Cognition Lab from Berisoft, along with detailed screenshots, go to http://www.sona-systems.com/help/cognitionlab.aspx. The product may change more often than we update our documentation, so the help page will contain the very latest information.
External Study Credit Granting with PsyToolkit
For the latest instructions on integration with Psytoolkit, along with detailed screenshots, go to https://www.psytoolkit.org/lessons/sona.html. The product may change more often than we update our documentation, so the help page will contain the very latest information.
External Study Credit Granting with Resultal
For the latest instructions on integration with Resultal, along with detailed screenshots, go to https://medium.com/@resultal/how-to-use-sona-systems-with-resultal-tutorial-76434cb2f5c4. The product may change more often than we update our documentation, so the help page will contain the very latest information.
External Study Credit Granting with PsychoPy (Pavlovia)
For the latest instructions on integration with PsychoPy (hosted on Pavlovia), along with detailed screenshots, go to https://www.sona-systems.com/help/psychopy.aspx. The product may change more often than we update our documentation, so the help page will contain the very latest information.
External Study Credit Granting with Labvanced
For the latest instructions on integration with Labvanced, along with detailed screenshots, go to https://www.sona-systems.com/help/labvanced.aspx. The product may change more often than we update our documentation, so the help page will contain the very latest information.
External Study Credit Granting with Jitsutech
For the latest instructions on integration with Jitsutech, along with detailed screenshots, go to https://www.sona-systems.com/help/jitsutech.aspx. The product may change more often than we update our documentation, so the help page will contain the very latest information.
Client-Side Completion URL Responses
For help with testing, listed below are the possible messages that the participant will see when they are redirected to the Client-Side Completion URL. It is important to note that if the system has a language enabled other than English, then the message will be displayed in the participant’s preferred language, instead of English (unless their language preference is English).
Status Message | Explanation |
Web study credit successfully granted. | The credit was granted successfully. |
No credit given because you are not a participant, and therefore cannot sign-up for this study. | A non-participant account (e.g., the researcher) accessed the URL, but the URL was accessed correctly. Usually this happens when a non-participant clicks on the Sample Link with Embedded ID Code link from the study. This message will occur when testing the credit granting setup. This signifies that everything is set up correctly. |
Invalid experiment_id or credit_token. | The experiment_id or credit_token in the completion URL was invalid. As this does not change for each participant, this is most likely to occur if the completion URL was somehow incomplete or truncated. |
Invalid survey_code. | The survey_code was not specified at all, or was blank. This may indicate the external study is not properly placing the survey_code in the completion URL. |
Invalid survey_code. ## [some number] | The survey_code was provided, but is not valid for this study. |
You have already received credit for this study. / You have already participated in this study. | The participant has already participated in this study and received credit/been marked as participated. |
You are not eligible to participate in this study. | The participant has already signed up for this study, but has been marked as a no-show, and has no other signups for this study, which are in Awaiting Action state. |
Web study credit grant error. ## [some number] | Some other generic error. Please contact Technical Support for more information. |
Server-Side Completion URL Responses
For help in testing, listed below are the possible messages that the system will give if the Server-Side Completion URL is loaded. For consistency, this feature is documented using the same format as the general documentation for the API interface. See Automating Tasks – API for information about how to locate the API documentation.
Input Parameters
Below are the following input parameters for use with the WebstudyCredit API function. These are included automatically when the system generates the Server-Side Completion URL. Note the parameters must be specified as part of the URL (an HTTP GET) and not via an HTTP POST request.
Parameter | Description / Possible Values |
experiment_id | The Experiment ID of the study. |
credit_token | The credit token used to identify/reference the study. |
survey_code | The code that identifies the participant from the external web study. |
Error Codes
Below are the possible error messages encountered and their respective descriptions. If the request was successful, there will not be an Error object returned, only a Result object. See Sample Output for an example.
Error Type | Error Code | Description |
Authentication failed | 0 | unspecified error |
Invalid experiment_id | -1 | An invalid experiment_id value has been entered |
Invalid credit_token | -2 | An invalid credit_token value has been entered |
Participant already granted credit | -3 | The participant has already been granted credit |
Participant already marked participated | -4 | The participant has already participated |
Participant not eligible (no-show) | -5 | The participant is not eligible for credit |
Invalid survey_code | -6 | An invalid survey_code value has been entered |
Not a participant | -7 | A non-participant user (typically the researcher) tried to get credit, but they are ineligible. |
Using the SURVEY CODE Feature
Note: If you are only interested in external study credit granting, then this section may not be applicable. This section describes how to use the survey code feature to link a sign-up in the system to data collected in the external study. However, it also describes the foundation for how the survey code feature works, which is useful in better understanding the external study credit grant feature.
For web-based studies administered outside the system, there is a special feature available for advanced users to track sign-ups in their web-based study. All while still preserving confidentiality. This feature applies only to web-based studies administered outside the system.
Before going further, it is important to note that this is an advanced feature and may require some programming skills. Sona Systems is unable to provide technical support for any programming questions.
The way this feature works is that if the text %SURVEY_CODE% is placed anywhere within the Study URL field, the system will automatically replace this text with a unique number for the participant. This unique number will be displayed next to their sign-up within the system, making it easier to match sign-ups by this number. The number can be anywhere from 4-7 characters in length, and will not contain numbers leading with zeroes (1234 is possible, but 01234 is not).
The external study will then need to be set up to process this code and log it appropriately. Sona Systems cannot provide detailed technical support on how to program an external study, as that code is external to our software.
Here is an example of how this works. Let’s say the study URL is:
http://www.myschool.edu/mysurvey.html
If the Study URL is entered in the system as:
http://www.myschool.edu/mysurvey.html?id=%SURVEY_CODE%
Then when a participant clicks on that URL, the system will replace %SURVEY_CODE% with a unique numeric value to identify the participant.
For example, the URL may be changed to:
http://www.myschool.edu/mysurvey.html?id=30039
If that is the case, on the page in the system listing sign-ups for this study (i.e., in the timeslot), the code 30039 will appear next to that participant’s sign-up.
If this code is parsed and handled by the external study, the researcher can easily link up the sign-ups in the system with which they have collected data from within their external study, so they know who to give credit to. It is important to note that the crediting still will not occur automatically. The purpose of this feature is to provide a way to identify participants without compromising privacy, as the system can then be configured to not display names next to sign-ups.
If a participant is not viewing the URL (for example, the researcher is viewing the URL), this special survey code text will simply be removed. It is important to note that this special text must be in all capital letters, and surrounded by percent signs. You may confirm it was entered correctly because a sample URL will be displayed when you go to view (not edit) the study, below the normal study website link.
If you provide a SurveyMonkey, Qualtrics, Inquisit or other URL from any other product supported in the Study URL field, then the system will provide guidance (after saving your changes) about how to use the survey code feature.
Working with Timeslots (Sessions)
Timeslots, also referred to as Sessions, are the available times when a participant may participate in the study. If you are setting up timeslots for a web-based study, please read the section in this documentation on Web-Based (Online) Studies for additional information. If you are setting up timeslots for a study conducted over videconference, see Videoconference Studies for more information.
Timeslots allow you to specify date, time, location, maximum number of participants, and researcher information for a session.
Timeslot Usage Restrictions
If enabled on your system, you may find that there is a limit to the amount of time available for scheduling timeslots. This usage is computed by adding up all the past timeslots where credit was granted (or participation marked in the case of paid studies) or is in awaiting action status, then adding all timeslots in the future, regardless of credit status. Depending on how your system is configured, the system may only look at all timeslots after a certain date, instead of all timeslots.
You may find that the usage goes down over time, as time progresses and timeslots that were in the future, which had no sign-ups are now in the past and no longer count towards usage (empty timeslots). The timeslot usage and limit is listed whenever you add a timeslot, if usage restrictions apply. It may also be listed when you view your profile, depending on how your system is configured.
Timeslots Linked to Specific Researchers
If your system is configured to allow multiple researchers per study, you will also have an option to link timeslots to a specific researcher. This is done primarily for organization purposes, and has no effect on who can view and modify the study, as well as any timeslots for that study.
This feature is useful when there are a number of researchers running a study, and researchers are responsible for running specific timeslots. If a timeslot has a specific researcher linked to it, then only that researcher will be listed as the point of contact when a participant receives any emails related to their participation in that timeslot. Only the researcher connected to that timeslot receives related notification emails, such as participant cancellation notifications, and reminder emails, assuming such emails are enabled.
It is also possible to have some timeslots where a specific researcher is linked to them, and others where all researchers who are assigned to the study are responsible for the timeslot. It is not possible to link more than one, but not all of the researchers for the study to a specific timeslot. The options are to either link one researcher to the timeslot, or all of them.
If a researcher were removed from a study, then any timeslots that were linked to them for that study would be changed. In this case, all researchers for the study are now responsible for those timeslots.
To use this feature, the system must be configured to allow multiple researchers per study. Then the study itself must be configured to allow researchers to be linked to specific timeslots. The study must have more than one researcher connected to it.
Creating Timeslots
To add a timeslot for a study, you must first choose the study that you would like to add a timeslot for. To view your studies, choose the My Studies option on the top toolbar. Click on the desired study and choose the Timeslots choice.
You will see a list of any existing timeslots, and the Add a Timeslot option on the top of the page. Click on Add A Timeslot.
The following table lists the information you may enter about a timeslot, along with an explanation. All fields are required.
Field | Explanation |
Date | The date for the timeslot. |
Start Time | The time when the timeslot will start. A sample time will be provided. If you want to change the time, please use the same format as the time you see presented. Note in particular how “a.m.” and “p.m.” are handled (if such a format is enabled on your system). |
End Time | The time when the timeslot will end. This is computed automatically based on the duration you entered when you set up the study. |
Number of Participants | The number of participants for this timeslot. This number is not visible to participants. They will only see whether the timeslot is full or not. The maximum number is 999. |
Location | The physical location where the study will take place for this timeslot, or the videoconference URL if the timeslot will be conducted over videoconference. It will be automatically filled with the location of the previous timeslot, when available, to assist in data entry. Depending on how your system is configured, you may see a list of pre-configured locations. You may choose any of those locations and click on View Schedule to see the schedule for a location. The system will automatically prevent you from adding a timeslot using a location that is already in use at the time you try to schedule the timeslot. If you do not see the location in the list that you plan to use, simply type in the location in the text field below it. You may enter a videoconference URL or a physical location, but not both. The location field (including videoconference URL) does not apply for web-based studies. |
Researcher | The researcher assigned to this specific timeslot. The list will contain a list of all researchers for the study. Choose ALL if all researchers for the study should be assigned to this timeslot. See Timeslots Linked to Specific Researchers for more information. |
To assist in data entry, the system will automatically fill in the date, time, and location based on the ending time of the last timeslot for this study. If applicable, your current timeslot usage will be listed, and you will be prevented from adding a timeslot that would exceed your timeslot usage time limit. A convenient calendar is provided next to the form, and you can click on any date and that date will be transferred to the form.
If you add a timeslot and there is another timeslot, for any study, which occurs at the same time and location, you will receive a warning. The addition will be allowed, unless the location was chosen from the pulldown list of locations, in which case the addition will be blocked. If you add a timeslot that will take place outside of normal hours (for example, at 1:00 am), the system will provide a warning but will allow it to be scheduled. You may not schedule a timeslot to occur after the IRB expiration date for your study, if Strict IRB mode is enabled by the administrator. The system allows adding timeslots to a study that is not available to participants, meaning not active or not approved. However, it will give a warning because participants are not able to sign up for the timeslot.
If you are running a web-based (online study), you should create a single timeslot with the participation deadline equal to the last day you would like to run the study. For number of participants, specify the maximum number of participants who may participate. If you are running a web-based study and you plan to collect data from more than 999 participants (999 is the maximum allowed in one timeslot), then once that timeslot is close to filling up, create a second timeslot at a slightly different time and/or date as the first timeslot.
Creating Multiple Timeslots
If you would like to add multiple timeslots at once, choose the Add Multiple Timeslots link. You may choose to add a specified number of timeslots, or copy the timeslots from another week to a specified week. If you choose to copy timeslots, the system will copy the time, location, and number of participants for the specified week to the desired week, for each day of that week (starting with Monday).
If you choose to create a specified number of timeslots, you can choose the number of timeslots you would like to add, the start time and date, and the amount of time between each timeslot (to allow for breaks). You also may specify timeslots that would occur outside normal business hours be shifted to the next business day, and specify when business hours occur. The system considers Monday-Friday to be business days.
On the subsequent page, you may change any of this information to deal with special cases. Timeslots that you attempt to add that either have errors, or would result in exceeding the timeslot time usage limit will not be added. This feature is not available for web-based (online) studies, as web-based studies rarely have more than one timeslot.
If you do not want to add a specific timeslot that is listed, choose No in the Add This Timeslot? column.
Modifying and Deleting Timeslots
To modify or delete a timeslot for a study, you must first choose the study that you would like to deal with. To view your studies, choose the My Studies link from the top toolbar. Choose the Timeslots option in the View column for the desired study. You will see a list of all recent timeslots. Timeslots that are in the past with no participants signed up will not be displayed. To work with timeslots more than a few days old and to see all timeslots, you will see a link to view all timeslots for the study. Select the timeslot you would like to deal with, and click the Modify button.
If the timeslot has no participants signed up for it, you will see a Delete button. You may not delete a timeslot that has participants signed up for it. You would need to first cancel all existing signups for the timeslot. If you would like to delete the timeslot, click the Delete button, and you will see a confirmation page. Choose Delete again to delete the timeslot.
If you would like to modify the timeslot, modify the desired information and click the Update button just below the timeslot information. Depending on your system configuration (Timeslot Change Limit setting), you may be restricted from changing key information about the timeslot (date, time, location, and number of participants) if it’s only a few hours before the timeslot will take place.
It is important to note that participants will not be notified of any changes you make to the timeslot. You should contact them via email, if information needs to be passed onto them. A link is provided on the same page to do so. If you change the date or time of the timeslot, you will be warned that this was changed, in the event the change was unintended. You may not update the size of the timeslot, meaning the number of participants, to a value lower than the current number of participants signed up for the timeslot. Generally, researchers only update timeslots with sign-ups to update the location if it was not available when the timeslot was originally created.
If the study or researcher is subject to timeslot time usage restrictions, the system will enforce them. This prevents you from making changes that would result in exceeding the timeslot usage limit, for example by increasing the number of participants.
Timeslot Change Tracking
The system automatically tracks certain changes that occur with a timeslot. This includes information about any time the timeslot’s key information (date, time, etc.) is changed, as well as any time a manual sign-up or cancellation is performed, but not a sign-up or cancellation done by the participant. This information is tracked for the last 3 months of changes for each timeslot.
To view this information, choose the Timeslot Modification Log when viewing a timeslot, and you will see this information.
Deleting Multiple Timeslots
If you would like to delete multiple timeslots at once, select the desired study and choose Timeslots. At the top of the Timeslots page, you will see a Delete Multiple Timeslots option. The option may not appear in certain cases where such an option is not available due to a lack of available timeslots to delete.
After going to that page, you will see a list of timeslots eligible for deletion. You can choose to view only empty timeslots (timeslots with no sign-ups), or all timeslots including those with sign-ups. If a timeslot has sign-ups, it will only be listed if there are no pending (Awaiting Action) sign-ups, no (non-zero) credit grants, and no unexcused no-shows.
Choose the timeslots you would like to delete, and choose Delete Selected Timeslots to continue. If you would like to delete all empty timeslots, there is a Check All option at the bottom of this page that will automatically select all timeslots listed on the page for deletion. Click the Uncheck All button to revert the effect of choosing the Check All option.
The system routinely deletes all empty timeslots more than 3 months old to preserve database space.
Manual Sign-Up
If enabled on your system, you may manually sign up participants for your study on their behalf. There are a number of situations where this is desirable. If the participant shows up for a timeslot they were not signed up for, and you elect to let them participate, you can sign them up on the spot for the timeslot. In this situation, participants may not be able to sign-up on their own, because the sign-up deadline has passed. You may also sign up a participant for a study that has already occurred, if necessary.
It is important to note that a manual sign-up overrides any restrictions you have placed on the study (e.g. pre-requisites, prescreen restrictions, course restrictions, age restrictions). However, you will be warned if you are overriding any restrictions. You may not sign up a participant for the same timeslot that they are already signed up for. You are allowed to sign them up for a study, even if they are already signed up for a different timeslot for that same study. You will receive a warning when doing this. You may not sign up a participant for a study if it causes them to exceed their maximum credit or study limit. If it is necessary to do so, please ask the administrator to do this. They are allowed to do a manual sign-up even when it will exceed maximum credit or study limits.
You may not sign up a participant whose account is Limited, if your study is not a research alternative study. Those participants whose account is Limited are ineligible for your study. However, the administrator can still do this.
If participants must acknowledge the system’s human subjects/privacy policy before logging in, and they have not done so, the system will show a warning about this but will otherwise allow the sign-up to proceed.
If the system is configured as such, the participant will receive a confirmation email when you sign them up for a study. In that case, you also have the option to enter comments to be included in this email that may better explain to the participant why they were signed up. If you are signing up a participant for a timeslot more than one year old, a confirmation will not be sent despite the system configuration. This is to make it easier when transitioning from an existing system, as you may sign up old participants for the purposes of preventing them from signing up for the same study again in Sona. You may only sign up participants for your own study.
To sign up a participant for a timeslot, you must first find the desired study and timeslot. To view your studies, choose the My Studies option from the top toolbar. Click on Timeslots for the desired study. Then, select the timeslot you would like to deal with, and click the Modify button.
If it is enabled, at the bottom of the page you will see a Manual Sign-Up option. Type in the participant’s User ID or SSO ID (you may have to ask them for this) and click Sign Up. If enabled, you may also choose to sign up a participant using their unique ID code. You may have the choice to enter their name and choose from a list of participants. In all cases, after proceeding, you will see a confirmation page that also lists any restrictions on the study. Choose Sign Up to complete the sign-up.
If you are subject to timeslot time usage restrictions, the system will enforce them and prevent you from signing up a participant in the timeslot if that results in exceeding your timeslot usage limit.
If you are doing a manual sign-up for a multi-part study, you must do a manual sign-up for each part separately. The system will overlook the scheduling range restrictions as well.
You cannot use the manual sign-up feature for online survey studies because the sign-up for the study is integrated with the administration of the survey.
The manual sign-up feature will not appear for a researcher if the study requires approval by the administrator, and it has not yet been approved. This is to ensure that sign-ups don’t occur for a study that has not yet been approved, as research should not take place prior to approval.
Manual Cancellation
If enabled on your system, you may have the opportunity to cancel a participant’s sign-up. You may only cancel sign-ups that are in a No Action Taken state. To cancel a sign-up, find the desired timeslot and participant. Click Cancel next to their name. The participant will be sent an email about the cancellation, and who performed it, along with a confirmation code. Their sign-up will be immediately cancelled. The administrator may also receive a copy of this cancellation email, depending on how the system is configured.
You may cancel all participants for the same timeslot at one time, when applicable. The option will appear below the list of sign-ups. This is done in cases where there are two or more participants signed up for the timeslot who are eligible for cancellation (No Action Taken state).
Viewing the Participant List
To view the list of participants who have signed up for your study, you must first select the study and timeslot you wish to see. To view your studies, choose the My Studies option from the top toolbar. Click on the timeslots link in the View column for the desired study. Then, select the timeslot you would like to see, and click the Modify button.
The list of participants, along with their email addresses will be listed. If ID codes are enabled, you will only see an ID code and no name or email address for each participant. In this case the list will be sorted by ID code.
Viewing Prescreen Responses
If online prescreening is enabled on your system and you are also allowed to view an individual participant’s prescreen responses, then you will see a Prescreen link next to each participant’s name (or ID code) when viewing information for a timeslot. Click on that link to view the participant’s prescreen responses.
If you would like to download the prescreen data for all participants in your study, choose the Download Prescreen Responses option after clicking on your study in the Study Menu. That will allow you to download all the data at once, in CSV (comma-separated) format, for further analysis. The download will not contain data for participants marked as a no-show.
If age appears in the prescreen data (not as a response to a prescreen question but as part of the participant’s profile), then it is computed based on the participant’s age at the time of the timeslot for lab studies. For web studies, it’s based on their age at the time you download the data.
If you would like to analyze responses in aggregate, meaning across all participants in the system, see Analyzing Prescreen Responses in this documentation.
Granting or Revoking Credit
At the completion of a session, you should promptly mark the attendance status of participants in the system to ensure proper credit grants. The reason for the prompt handling of this situation is in the event your study is a pre-requisite for another study, as well as for good record-keeping. You do not want to hold up other studies that are waiting on your response to the study you just ran.
To grant or revoke credit for a timeslot, you must first find the desired study and timeslot. To view your studies, choose the My Studies option from the top toolbar. Click on the Timeslots link in the View column for the desired study. Then, select the timeslot you would like to see, and click the Modify button.
You will see a list of participants, identified either by name or ID code. If the participant properly participated in the study, click the radio button next to their name in the Participated column.
If the participant did not appear for the timeslot, you may choose to mark their no-show as excused or unexcused. Depending on how your system is configured, an unexcused no-show may result in a penalty being assessed for the participant (the system will compute this automatically), or their privileges to use the system may be restricted. You should ask your administrator for guidelines about when to grant an excused no-show or an unexcused no-show. Generally, excused no-shows are granted for extenuating circumstances, like if the participant was involved in a car accident on their way to the appointment. An unexcused no-show is generally used when the participant did not show up and had no reasonable excuse. For most schools, many of the no-shows are unexcused and are due to carelessness on the part of participants. A no-show generally does not prevent the participant from signing up for the same study again, unless they a general account limitation occurred as part of earning the no-show.
Depending on how your system is configured, you may see an option to grant a credit value that is different from the standard credit grant. This is useful when you want to grant a participant a lower credit value because they left the study early, or a higher credit value if the study ran longer than expected. The default value that is selected is the study’s standard credit value. If this is enabled, then you may also grant 0 credits. This is useful if you do not want to grant credits to the participant, but also want to prevent them from participating in the study again. If a participant is granted 0 credits, and the study is set to prevent duplicate sign-ups, then the participant will not be able to sign up for that study again.
If desired, enter any comments about the session in the Comments section. Generally, this is used to indicate the reason for denying credit. Participants will see anything you enter in the Comments section for their sign-up, and these comments will be included in the email sent to participants when a credit grant/revocation occurs, if notification emails are enabled on your system.
Click on the Update Sign-Ups button at the bottom of the list of sign-ups to save your changes. Credit will be granted or a penalty assessed, as necessary. The participant(s) will be emailed about this, depending on how your system is configured.
It is not recommended to leave any sign-up for a timeslot that has occurred in the “No Action Taken” stage. This is a credit “limbo” and the system will warn you upon your next login that the timeslot has not been dealt with properly. Note that if Manual Cancellation is enabled and you would like to cancel a participant’s sign-up, the sign-up must be in No Action Taken state.
Depending on how your system is configured, the system may automatically grant credit to participants for timeslots that are more than an administrator-specified number of hours old, and where the researcher has taken no action. You can always change the automatic credit grant later if it was in error. The automatic credit grant takes place once a day, usually overnight. Your administrator can let you know if such a feature is enabled on your system.
If you need to do a simple credit grant or no-show across many timeslots, see the Uncredited Timeslots section, which offers such a feature.
Granting Credit using QR Codes
For lab studies, another option to grant credit is by using QR codes. If enabled in the system, the reminder email sent to participants the day before their appointment will contain a QR code. Participants can show you this code from the email, and you can scan it to grant credit.
To scan a QR code, you can use the built-in camera feature on your smartphone. Most phones will recognize the QR code as you go to take a photo of it, and will offer to open the URL. There are also many free QR scanning apps available. After scanning the QR code, you will need to log in to the system if you are not already logged in, as a security measure to ensure the person scanning the QR code has privileges to grant credit.
This feature also works for studies conducted over videoconference – ask the participant to hold the QR code up to their camera and scan it that way.
Batch Credit Granting
In some cases, you may wish to automatically sign up and immediately credit a group of participants. This is useful if you administer a study on an ad-hoc basis, and want to credit participants after the fact.
To do so, go to the appropriate timeslot. You may want to create a timeslot specifically for this purpose, and click on Modify Timeslot. In the Manual Sign-Up section, if enabled, you will see a Batch Credit Grant link. Click that link and you can provide the list of User IDs of users you would like to sign up and credit. Users will be signed up and credited immediately. This feature overrides any sign-up restrictions on the study, just as a manual sign-up does.
The batch credit grant feature will not appear for a researcher if the study requires approval by the administrator and it has not yet been approved. This is to ensure that sign-ups don’t occur for a study that has not yet been approved. You may provide a list of up to 50 participants or as many participants as there are available spaces for the timeslot, whichever is less. Any participants listed past that limit will be ignored, but you are able to run the batch credit again with additional participants.
If you are signing up a participant for a timeslot more than one year old, a sign-up confirmation will not be sent despite the system configuration. This is to make it easier when transitioning from an existing system, as you may sign up past participants for the purposes of preventing them from signing up for the same study again in the system.
Emailing Participants
If you wish to contact participants in a particular timeslot for any reason, you may click on the Contact link that will appear next to each participant’s name or ID code, to contact an individual participant. To email the group of participants for a particular timeslot, click the Contact All Participants choice at the bottom of the Modify Timeslot page for that timeslot.
You will be taken to a page where you can fill out a message that the system will send to the selected participants. The message is auto-filled with some basic information about the study, so participants are aware of which study you are referring to. You may remove this information if desired. If you include the text %FIRST_NAME%, %LAST_NAME%, or %USERNAME% in the email text, the system will substitute it with the recipient’s first name, last name, or username. Note this text must be in upper case and surrounded by % symbols.
You may choose to receive a copy of the email that you send.
Depending on how your system is configured, participants may already be receiving a reminder about upcoming studies the day before they are scheduled to participate. Ask your administrator for more information.
In some cases, you may find it useful to contact all participants for the study, across all timeslots. This feature may be particularly useful if you are sending debriefing information when a study has concluded. To do so, go to My Studies, click Study Info next to the desired study, and choose the Contact Participants option (in the Study Menu). You will then be able to select which group of participants to send to, and a message to send. Messages will be sent in batches of 3,000 at a time, to avoid overloading email servers. You cannot include attachments in the email, so if you have a document you would like to include, you should post it on another website and provide a link to the document in the email you send.
The Sender address on the email will be the administrator email address, which is done to prevent the email from being blocked by junk email filters. The “Reply To” address of the email will be that of the user who is actually sending the email. When a user chooses to reply to the email, the reply will be sent to that “Reply To” address.
There is also the option to restrict the emails so that they only go to participants who signed up for timeslots in a specified date range. The date range is based on the date of the timeslot, not when the participant signed up for, completed, or received credit for the study.
You may see an option to indicate that the email you are sending is a study invitation email. If the email is inviting participants to another study and you indicate it is a study invitation email, then the email will not be sent to participants who have specifically opted out of receiving study invitation emails.
Finally, there is an option to specify a delay in sending the email, based on the number of hours from when the emailing option is used. This is useful if you want to target a certain time of day (e.g., during the evenings) when the email will be sent. The emails are generated at the time you use the emailing feature, but are stored on the email server queue until the specified sending time. These emails cannot be revoked once this emailing feature is used.
In most cases, summary information about the email you sent, in particular, to how many recipients it was sent to, will be logged and made available to the administrator. This is done to ensure that there is no abuse of the email feature in the system, and to ensure compliance with generally accepted Internet practices for sending emails.
Viewing Uncredited Timeslots
When you log in to the system, you will receive a warning if you have any timeslots that are more than two days old that have not been dealt with. You may view a list of all timeslots that have not been dealt with by choosing the View Uncredited Timeslots option from the My Studies page. The default view will show in-person studies with timeslots in the past, as well as all uncredited timeslots for some online studies (single-part online studies, and part 1 of multipart online studies) even when those timeslots are in the future. Participants typically participate in online studies right after they sign up, so these timeslots are often in need of crediting even if in the future (since the timeslot is based on participation deadline, not signup date). See the Web-Based (Online) Studies section of this documentation for more information.
If you would like to do a simple credit grant (standard credit grant, no comments) or no-show (of either type), you may do so directly from this page. Select the desired sign-ups/timeslots, and then choose the desired option.
If you need to do something more complex, like add comments or perform a special credit grant with a non-standard credit amount, you can easily click on the timeslot’s date and time and go directly to that timeslot.
In cases where a study has timeslots linked to specific researchers, you will see the warning only for timeslots that are specifically linked to you, or to everyone in the study (i.e., not timeslots linked to someone else in the study). However, when you view uncredited timeslots, you will see all uncredited timeslots for your studies, even if someone else is linked to one of the timeslots for your study. This is done to make it easier to give your fellow researchers assistance in dealing with uncredited timeslots.
Analyzing Prescreen Responses
If online prescreening is enabled on your system, then you might also have the opportunity to analyze prescreen responses in aggregate or as raw data. Choose the Prescreen Results option from the top menu bar. You can then select which question you would like to analyze, and whether you would like to see summary data or raw data (in CSV format) for the selected question. The raw data will identify each participant only by a unique ID code and not by their name, for privacy reasons. If for some reason you need the participants’ real names, ask the Administrator to run the same analysis. They are able to pull the real names with their report. This gives you access to all prescreen data across all participants in the system.
If you would like to analyze the prescreen data for just those who participated in your study, select the Download Prescreen Responses after clicking on your study. See Viewing Prescreen Responses in this documentation for further information.
Prescreen Qualification Analysis
If you would like to get an idea of how many participants meet a set of requirements for help in setting prescreen restrictions on your study use the Prescreen Qualification Analysis link from the Prescreen Responses page. Using this feature, you can select multiple questions (only those that qualify for study participation restrictions are listed) then the desired responses for those questions, and you will see how many participants meet that criterion.
If enabled, you may also contact participants and invite them to participate in any of your studies. See the Invite Qualified Participants to a Study section in this documentation for more information on how this works. The functionality is the same as the functionality described in that section, though a few options may be unavailable when not inviting directly from a study, as those options do not apply. Be sure to include information about how to sign up for the study in your communication to them, as a direct link to the study is not provided in the email.
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