How to do your own experiments in psychology and education
7.2 Recruit participants
You have three options for recruiting participants. Get informed about them and get organized for them as soon as possible. This is Salkind’s (2006) seventh Commandment of data collection.
a) “Hunting and gathering” on your own. If you need participants from a special population, then you MUST have gotten official permission from the Institutional Review Board or Ethics Committee first!
Even with more usual participants, if you don’t participate in Open Research Day or sign up to take advantage of the Participant Pool, then you’re on your own. You have to hunt down and persuade (often one by one!) the participants that you need. This is very time consuming, so plan ahead and leave a lot of time for it.
Regardless of how you recruit your participants, no-shows are a fact of life. Don’t count on everyone showing up when you want them to.
b) Open Research Day. Many Psychology Departments organize a day when the hundreds of Introduction to Psychology students can fulfill their requirement to participate in a psychology experiment. You’re running an experiment, so you can sign up to recruit participants on this day.
You may have noticed, ahem!, that with undergraduates attendance is difficult to predict. So, it’s hard to tell how many students will show up. Even if for some reason you can’t get enough participants on Open Research Day it’s a very convenient option.
Sign up to assure your participation! Arrive well ahead of time to set up and test your equipment. Think through how your procedure will work with larger groups of participants.
c) The Participant Pool. Similarly, most Psychology Departments have someone help the experimenters find participants. In this case, you sign up as an experimenter, post a time and place when you will need participants, and pray for them to come. Then you repeat the process until you have recruited enough participants.
Sometimes, this means that you will have to run the participants one by one. Be aware that this can take a lot of time, so plan ahead! Also, it’s often the case that you will have to go out and persuade people to sign up.
a) “Hunting and gathering” on your own. If you need participants from a special population, then you MUST have gotten official permission from the Institutional Review Board or Ethics Committee first!
Even with more usual participants, if you don’t participate in Open Research Day or sign up to take advantage of the Participant Pool, then you’re on your own. You have to hunt down and persuade (often one by one!) the participants that you need. This is very time consuming, so plan ahead and leave a lot of time for it.
Regardless of how you recruit your participants, no-shows are a fact of life. Don’t count on everyone showing up when you want them to.
b) Open Research Day. Many Psychology Departments organize a day when the hundreds of Introduction to Psychology students can fulfill their requirement to participate in a psychology experiment. You’re running an experiment, so you can sign up to recruit participants on this day.
You may have noticed, ahem!, that with undergraduates attendance is difficult to predict. So, it’s hard to tell how many students will show up. Even if for some reason you can’t get enough participants on Open Research Day it’s a very convenient option.
Sign up to assure your participation! Arrive well ahead of time to set up and test your equipment. Think through how your procedure will work with larger groups of participants.
c) The Participant Pool. Similarly, most Psychology Departments have someone help the experimenters find participants. In this case, you sign up as an experimenter, post a time and place when you will need participants, and pray for them to come. Then you repeat the process until you have recruited enough participants.
Sometimes, this means that you will have to run the participants one by one. Be aware that this can take a lot of time, so plan ahead! Also, it’s often the case that you will have to go out and persuade people to sign up.
| Please note: Currently, access to Open Research Day and the Participant Pool is restricted to project that already have IRB approval. Therefore, these options are not open to us. |
| Read this topic next: | 7.3 "Run" participants |
About
© 2009 Created by Mike Dillinger, PhD on Ning. Create a Ning Network!
