RESEARCHER/P.I. DOCUMENTATION
Basics
On Sona, you create studies. Each study may have a number of timeslots, which are the group sizes and the
times when you plan to run the study. Students signup for the timeslots by viewing a list of studies and
available timeslots. You mark participation records to students after the session occurs.
Sona User Name
When you go to the the login page, you will see a link to request an account. This form is only for participants.
Do not use this form to request an account, as participant accounts have an entirely different set of privileges.
The Lab will provide you with a username and password to login to the site.
Updating Your Profile
It is recommended you provide your phone number and office location, as most human subject committees
require that this information be made available to participants. This contact information will be displayed to
participants when they view information about the study. If you are P.I., this contact information will be
displayed if a participant explicitly chooses to view it (since the researcher is the primary point of contact for a
study).
Researchers may also choose to receive a daily reminder (by email) with information about all of their
study sessions scheduled for the following day.
Adding a Study
You may choose to set up your study and timeslots before you have received the proper approvals (CPHS,
administrator, room reservations). In this case, you can specify that the study is not visible to participants.
As soon as your approvals are received, you can simply make the study visible. All first time studies require
to be approved by the administrator who will ensure that all fields are entered correctly.
Studies for Pay
If the study is not for credit, you may set it up as a pay-only study and specify the compensation amount. If
participants receive credit AND they are compensated, you should set it up as a credit study and indicate
additional compensation in the study’s description. If the monetary compensation a participant receives for
a study depends on decisions they make during the study, you must enter the minimum payment when
setting up the study, and then note in the study description the entire range of compensation that is
possible.
Study Name
Brief Abstract
Detailed
Description
Eligibility
Requirements
Pre-Requisites
Disqualifiers
A short name for the study. Add UGBA105 or UGBA106 to correctly identify studies for
course credit and make it clear for students who are enrolled in both courses whether your
study provides BA or marketing credit.
It is displayed when participants view the list of all studies. Paid studies usually have the
compensation information included here, particulary if the payment varies.
The more you describe the study, the more participants you will recruit. Do not
disclose your hypothesis or any information that participants should not know before
the study.
You may include basic HTML in this area, e.g. a paragraph break is <p>, text in bold
<b>text </b>.
If you have any requirements on who may participate (e.g., only left-handed), list them
here. They will be displayed when participants view a list of all available studies. Note
that Sona does not enforce these requirements, but it is expected a participant will only
sign up for a study in which they are qualified, since they would otherwise fail to receive
credit or payment. In most cases, you will leave this field as-is and set prescreen
participation restrictions, which you can do after you add the study.
If there are studies a participant must have participated in before, choose them here.
If there are any studies a participant must not have participated in, please select them
here. Enter these studies in your study description because participants want to know
why they do not qualify.
Course
Choose UGBA105, UGBA106, or Paid pool. If you don’t restrict a course, all students will be
Restrictions
able to sign up, e.g. paid students will sign up for a course credit study.
Duration
Studies for course credit are only ½ or 1h long. Don’t post a 50 minutes study to gain unfair
advantage over 1h long studies. All such studies will be deleted. Paid studies may be of any
length and any payment. Studies are compensated on average at $15/h or $10/30 minutes.
Preparation
Enter any advanced preparation a participant must do here (e.g. “do not eat 2 hours
before session”).
Invitation Code Participants must know the invitation code to sign up for this study. This is often used if
Is this a webbased study?
Study URL
Credits/Pay
Researcher(s)
Principal
Investigator
IRB Approval
Code
Approved?
Active Study?
Notification
when a
participant
signs up or
cancels?
Researchers at
Timeslot-Level
the researcher wants to personally select participants, so the researcher only provides
the invitation code to the desired participants.
If you have set up the study on another website, you should note the study is
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 so you may easily identify participants, add the
text %SURVEY_CODE%in the URL where you would like the identifier to be placed.
Studies are compensated on average at $15/h or $10/30 minutes.
A study cannot not be switched between credit and payment. If you are running the same
study with course credit and then with paid participants, you have to create another study.
Course credit studies are 1/2h or 1h in length.
Select the researcher for this study. Most likely, this is you, and your name will
automatically be selected. If you are a researcher, then you may not change who the
researcher is (the P.I. for the study, as well as the administrator, can change this). If you
specify multiple researchers, each researcher has full control over the study.
If you see this option, then you must select a P.I.
Enter the IRB approval code here. This field is required and displayed to the administrator
to help keep track of studies.
Ensure you have received the necessary approvals (administrator, CPHS) to run the study
before choosing Yes. A study must be Approved and Active to show up on the list of
studies which participants may sign up for.
The reason to select No is if the study is being kept for historical purposes, but should
not show up to participants on the list of studies they may sign up for. Often, this is
done so the system can enforce cases, where the inactive study is a pre- requisite or
restriction for an active study.
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.
If set to Yes, it will be possible to assign a specific researcher (from the list of researchers
for the study) to a timeslot. If set to No, then it is assumed that all researchers (assigned
to the study) are responsible for all timeslots.
Automatic
If set to Yes, timeslots that are more than a specified number of hours old and still in the
Credit Granting Awaiting Action state will be changed to a credit grant. Due to no-shows, this feature should
not be used. This feature may be used for online studies as the credit grant will take place
the specified number of hours after the timeslot (participation deadline) has occurred.
Credits will be granted to all (e.g. 300) signups regardless of whether they completed the
surveys on external website such as Qualtrics.
Private
These notes are only visible to the researchers for this study, and not to participants.
Comments
Research
Some participants, for various reasons (typically for accruing too many unexcused noAlternative?
shows), may be restricted such that they can only sign up for research alternative studies.
Only an administrator may change this value (the default is No).
Participant
Enter the deadline before the study is to occur that the participant may sign up, in whole
Sign-Up
hours. The shorter this deadline, the more participants you may have a chance to recruit.
Deadline
Cancellation
24h
deadline
Prescreen Participation Restrictions
You can set participation restrictions based on prescreen responses that participants must complete when
they first log in to Sona in the beginning of each semester. Participants are unaware that such restrictions are
placed - if they do not qualify they will not see the study.
To set restrictions, view (do not choose edit) your study and choose View/Modify Restrictions. You will see a
list of eligible questions which you may use for your restrictions. Choose the questions you would like to
restrict upon and on the subsequent page, you can select each value that is acceptable for each question you
have chosen . You may also use Analyzing Prescreen Responses to get an idea of how many participants qualify
for participation. Note the prescreen is only filled out by newly logged in users each semester and more
students will qualify than have recently logged in.
If you change the restrictions, it will not remove the study sign-ups for participants who qualified earlier. If you
want to prescreen participants based on new criteria, state them in the study eligibility requirements but
unqualified students will still be able to see the study and accidentally sign up.
Inviting Qualified Participants to a Study
While viewing the list of prescreen restrictions you may see the option to Invite Qualified Participants. If you
have set participation restrictions for the study based on course enrollment, those restrictions will be abided
by when determining which participants receive the email.
The administrator can pull up a report of how many emails a specific researcher has sent, so it is good to be
careful about not abusing this feature. In addition, Sona reserves the right to temporarily remove the right to
login from a researcher if there are verifiable reports of abuse of this feature.
Online Studies
You may set up online studies internally in the system (in Sona) or outside the system (e.g. Qualtrics). Online
studies are typically setup with one timeslot which contains the maximum number of participants, and the
last date and time when they can participate. If the survey is set up outside the system, then participants are
not given the URL for the website until they have signed up, and up until the timeslot they signed up for is still
in the future.
For Qualtrics surveys, you may want to develop some method of linking the participant’s Sona ID to your
survey, so you know who to grant credit to. One way to do this is to ask the participant’s name (or some other
identifying information) that will make it easy to locate their sign-up on Sona and grant them credit once they
have completed your online study. Another method of tracking, which offers more anonymity, is to use the
Survey Code feature. Note that in all outside the system cases, the system will not automatically grant credit
once the participant has finished the study, as it does not know when something occurred on a website outside
the system. For this reason, researchers should routinely login and grant credit as necessary.
Using the Survey Code
To link Qualtrics with Sona IDs, do the following on Qualtrics:
S U R V E Y F L O W , A D D A N E W E L E M E N T H E R E , E M B E D D E D D A T A , and type SVID, save Flow.
On Sona:
S T U D I E S , A D D N E W , O N L I N E E X T E R N AL S T U D Y (it will not work with Standard studies), paste your survey
link under I S T H I S A W E B - B A SE D ST U D Y ?, add &SVI D=%SURVEY_CODE% to the end of the link.
Working with Timeslots (Sessions)
Timeslots (also referred to as Sessions) are the available times when a participant may participate in the
study. They allow you to specify a date, time, location, maximum number of participants, and researcher for a
session. Participants cannot see how many people have signed up for a timeslot, nor how many spaces are
available for a timeslot.
Timeslots Linked to Specific Researchers
The study itself must be configured to allow researchers to be linked to specific timeslots, and the study must
have more than one researcher connected to it. The two options are to link one or all researchers to the
timeslot. If a researcher is removed from a study, then any timeslots that were linked to them for that study
will be changed so all researchers (for the study) are now responsible for those timeslots.
This is done primarily for organization purposes, and has no effect on who can view and modify the study, or 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 contact point when a participant receives any emails and only that
researcher will receive related notification emails, such as participant cancellation notification, and reminder
emails (assuming such emails are enabled).
To Add a Timeslot
1. To add a timeslot for a study, you must first choose the study that you would like to add a timeslot for.
Go to the study, on the bottom of the screen, click on “View/Administer Time Slots”.
2. On the next Timeslots screen, click “Add A Timeslot” or “Add Multiple Timeslots.”
3. On the next screen, fill in the required information.
a. The number of timeslots indicate the number of 1 hour or 30 minute time slots. You can select
large number here and then delete them on the next page before you actually confirm the
creation of the sessions.
b. Make sure you have the room reserved before you choose your location.
4. Click “Add” to go to the confirmation page. After checking to make sure all information is correct, click
“Add Selected Timeslots” to confirm. This confirms the timeslots and allows people to sign up. You need
to email Silva when you’ve this, so that she can make an announcement to the pool.
This limit is not visible to participants. They will only see whether the timeslot is full
# of
Participants or not.
If you need 6 participants, recruit at least 8 and give the overrecruited students $5
show-up fee.
You may choose any of those locations and click on View Schedule to see the
Location
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, you can simply
type in the location in the text field below it.
To Modify a Timeslot
1. On the Timeslots screen, click “Modify” next to the timeslots that you want to make changes to.
2. Make changes as needed and click “Update”.
3. You can also view the sign-ups on this page.
4. It should be noted that participants will not be notified (by email) of any changes you make to the
timeslot, so you should contact them if information needs to be passed on to them (e.g. change of
location). You may not update the size of the timeslot (number of participants) to a value lower than the
current number of participants signed up for the timeslot.
To Delete a Timeslot
1. On the Timeslots screen, click “Delete Multiple Timeslots”.
2. Choose “Delete Timeslot” next to the ones you want to delete.
3. Click “Delete Selected Timeslots” to confirm.
4. You may not delete a timeslot that has participants signed up for it.
Timeslot Change Tracking
The system automatically tracks certain changes that occur with a timeslot, including any time key information
about the timeslot (date, time, etc.) is changed, as well as any time a manual sign-up or cancellation is
performed (i.e., not a sign-up or cancellation done by the participant). To see this information, choose the View
Timeslot Modification Log when viewing a timeslot.
Emailing Participants
Participants are already receiving a reminder about upcoming studies the day before they are scheduled to
participate. To email the group of participants for another reason, click the Contact All Participants choice at
the bottom of the Modify Timeslot page for that timeslot. There is also the option to restrict the emails so
they only go to participants who signed up for timeslots in a specified date range. (Please be careful not to
contact all participants across all timeslots as this way your message will be sent to all past participants as
well.) 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. Summary information about the email you sent, and in particular to
how many recipients it was sent to, will be logged and made available to the administrator. This is done to
ensure there is no abuse of the email facility in the system, in compliance with generally accepted Internet
practices for sending emails.
Manual Sign-Up
You may manually sign up participants for your study. For example:
If the participant happens to show 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.
If a participant wants to participate in an upcoming session, but the system says it is too late for them to sign
up, and she emails the researcher.
If enabled, you can perform a manual sign-up. See the Manual Sign-Up section of this documentation. If not
enabled, your administrator can still perform a manual sign-up.
You may also sign up a participant for a study that has already occurred, if necessary.
You may not sign up a participant for a study if it would cause them to exceed their maximum credit limit. If
it is necessary to do so, please ask the administrator to do this. You also may not sign up a participant whose
account is Limited, if your study is not a research alternative study, as those participants are ineligible for
your study.
To manually sign up participants, Modify the timeslot, scroll to the bottom of the page, and enter their
user ID or last names to sign them up. You will see a confirmation page that also lists any restrictions on the
study. Choose Sign Up to complete the sign-up.
Manual Cancellation
Although the Lab’s policy is not to cancel signups, in rare cases you may need to do so. To cancel a sign- up, find
the desired timeslot and participant in a Awaiting Action state, and 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. It is mandatory to enter reasons for the cancellation. The administrator will also receive a copy of this
cancellation email. When applicable, the option to cancel all participants for the same timeslot at one time
will appear below the list of signups.
Timeslot Usage Summary
The timeslot usage summary is available when viewing your study. This gives some basic information about
timeslot utilization in the past and in the future, as well as some basic no-show information. For credit studies,
the system also provides a summary of how many credits were granted.
Viewing Prescreen Responses
If online prescreens are 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 you
view the information for a timeslot. If you would like to download the prescreen data for all participants in
your study, choose the Download Prescreen Responses option. That will allow you to download all the data at
once, in CSV format. The download will not contain data for participants marked as a no-show.
Granting or Revoking Credit
At the completion of a session, you should promptly ensure proper credit grants. Select the timeslot and click
the Modify button. You will see a list of the participants who signed up and Awaiting Action next to their
names or ID code. If the participant was present, click the Credit Granted button next to their name (this text
may appear as Participated if the study is set up for payment). If the participant did not appear for the
timeslot, you may choose to mark their no-show as excused or unexcused. If desired, enter any comments
about the session in the Comments section. Participants will see these comments.
Guidelines about when to grant an excused no-show or an unexcused no-show
Generally, excused no-shows are granted for extenuating circumstances. For example, a student signs up and
later has changes in schedule beyond her control. She tries to cancel on Sona but the 24h cancellation deadline
has passed. The student emails you a regretful note with an excuse and informs about her absence. This
student should be marked as Excused no-show as she was unable to cancel due to the Sona settings. Do not
cancel sign-ups who email before the study and asked to cancel – mark them as Excused no-shows with a note
“Emailed before the study”. Late arrivals who are not admitted are also Excused no-shows (ask their names and
write a note “late” in the comments field after the study).
An unexcused no-show is assigned when the participant did not show up and did not reach out to you before
the study to inform you they would not be attending.
The third scenario is a student being absent and emailing you after the study with an excuse. The student may
mention anything from a car accident to writing down the wrong time/location. These situations are judged on
a case by case basis and it is up to you to decide whether the student was not able to contact you before the
study and correspondingly mark it as Excused no-show.
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 (if they deserve a
lower credit grant). You may also grant 0 credits if you do not want to grant credit but you also want to
prevent them from participating in the study again.