Participant Triage

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Revision as of 09:39, 20 June 2016 by 108.168.1.239 (talk) (This page sketches out the sequence of events around the enrolment of a prospective participant for one of our lab's experiments.)
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In-Lab Visit

All of our experiments will require participants to make an initial visit to our lab. Participants will enter room 342A, which is the small room adjacent to the primary testing room. The initial visit will involve a series of behavioral tests for which they will either get 1 credit or else receive a $10 gift card as compensation.

Consent

Participants must read the behavioral consent document and give verbal consent (we do not obtain written consent because our behavioral experiment poses minimal risk, and having written consent documents lying around only increases risk to participants' privacy). The consent document lists a series of tasks that the participant may be required to complete. Beside each task heading is a checkbox. The experimenter should check off the boxes corresponding to the tasks that the participant is to complete.

Database Entry

After having consented, the participant will use the computer in the testing room to connect to the lab website (http://ccnlab.buffalo.edu). There, (s)he will enrol as a new participant, and should make note of his/her assigned subject number. The subject number plus the participant's email address will be his/her login information. The enrolment screen requires the participant to provide demographic information and contact details and explicitly consent to be subsequently contacted for future experiments. If the participant is enrolling in the experiment as the first stage of an fMRI study, please explain to the participant:

Task Assignment

Initially, participants will have no tasks assigned. I have considered adding a default tasks feature to the lab website, but until I do so, there will be a short delay between when the participant enrols and when there are tasks for him/her to complete on the lab website. Upon enrolment, the experimenter should log into the lab website as an administrator and assign tasks to the new participant. The set of tasks assigned should agree with the tasks that were agreed to in the consent document.