Recruit Participants for Research Studies

Researchers in the Psychology Department can recruit participants directly (A) and from the Psychology Subject Pool (B).

A. Create Poster for Direct Recruitment

Department-approved recruitment posters are posted on the Paid Studies bulletin board in the first floor of Meyer Hall and on the Paid Studies web page. Use the PaidStudyPosterJan05 poster to recruit paid research participants, both from the subject pool and elsewhere. Use the ResearchAssistantPoster to advertise for paid or unpaid research assistants.

Please leave posters for Catharine Lennon in the Subject Pool mailbox in Room 550. When submitting a recruitment poster for subjects, please attach a copy of the relevant notification of approval by the University Committee on Activities Involving Human Subjects (UCAIHS). Department-approved applications to the Psychology Subject Pool are automatically forwarded to the UCAIHS for review. Researchers who are not using the Psychology Subject Pool must apply directly to the UCAIHS for approval.

After departmental approval, a color-coded copy of the flyer (yellow for paid studies, green for research assistants) will be posted on the Paid Studies web page and on the Paid Studies bulletin board on the first floor of the Meyer building. A copy of the approved flyer will be returned to you and additional color-coded copies may be posted on designated program bulletin boards. Please contact your Program Administrator regarding the location of these additional bulletin boards.

B. Use the Psychology Subject Pool

The rest of this page provides guidance and materials to assist you in applying for participants from the Psychology Subject Pool (with students in Introduction to Psychology, Stats, Core A, and Core B classes) and in getting the federally-required approval of the University Committee on Activities Involving Human Subjects (UCAIHS). Please review the instructions carefully before developing your application. New material is added and revisions made at least once a semester.

Only members (students, staff, and faculty) of the Psychology Department may apply for participants from the Psychology Subject Pool.

These are PDF documents that you can read with Adobe Acrobat Reader. It's free.

1. ResearcherGuideFeb08 describes how to apply for subjects (i.e., participants).

We encourage you to schedule studies on the weekends. See the guide for details.

There are penalties for researchers who do not record student participants' credit promptly on the Experimetrix website. We will apply these penalties if necessary, so please give students credit promptly.

2. ApplicationChecklistAug06 is a list of things to double-check that you have attended to in filling out your application for human subjects for your research project. You must submit it with your application, to save everyone's time.

These are Microsoft Word files. Modify them to describe your studies specifically. Submit a hard, printed copy of these forms when you apply for subjects.

1. BatteryApplicationNov07 provides instructions and the Battery Application form for those wishing to have a questionnaire included in the test battery administered at the beginning of the semester to students in Introductory Psychology, or to have access to battery information for research purposes. You will be notified by e-mail before the semester begins regarding application deadlines and dates of the battery assembly and disassembly sessions.

2. ApplicationFeb08 is the application form for human subjects from the Pool. Please use the version of Application that is current for this semester. It contains important instructions regarding the subject pool application and the UCAIHS approval process.

If you want to get approval to run adult participants from outside the Pool, for this study, in addition to Pool subjects, use this same form. Two separate applications are no longer necessary. But if you wish to use only non-Pool subjects, use the application form from NYU's University Committee on Activities Involving Human Subjects (UCAIHS), available at their web site: http://www.nyu.edu/ucaihs/.

If you have previously gotten the approval of NYU's UCAIHS for this study for work with non-Pool subjects only, you must still submit an application to the Psych Pool using our template, and provide a parental permission form and debriefing specific to the Pool. Your UCAIHS-approved, current date-stamped consent forms should be submitted with your application for Pool subjects.

3. InformedConsentAssentFeb08 is a sample consent form for all participants in your study to sign before they begin it. The form is closely modeled on that provided by NYU's UCAIHS, so it should pass muster there too. If your modifications make it more than one page long, print your consent form on both sides of a single sheet, so the signatures cannot be separated from the full text.

If you are planning a series of studies that differ in only minor ways (e.g., the specific words in the to-be-learned-list differ, but are all of the same nature), and you want to ensure that the same participants are not in more than one of these studies, design your consent form so that it is as specific as possible but applies to all of your sub-studies. Submit one application for the whole series.

4. ParentalPermissionFeb08 is a sample form for minor (under 18 years of age) participants' parents or guardians to sign before they begin your study. It is closely modeled on the "InformedConsent" form so you should be able to paste most information from that form into this one. If your modifications make it more than one page long, print the form on both sides of a single sheet, so the signatures cannot be separated from the full text. We will make your version of this form available to students as a PDF file, so they can print it and obtain a parent's signature before they come to your study.

UCAIHS Approval

All research with human subjects at NYU must be approved by the University Committee on Activities Involving Human Subjects (UCAIHS). UCAIHS full approval can only be given after the UCAIHS has completed its review and any revisions or clarifications requested by the UCAIHS have been submitted and approved. Note that data collection may not begin before full UCAIHS approval is received. This approval will be given by a letter from the UCAIHS and by the return to the investigator of Consent and Parental Permission Forms with the UCAIHS’s stamp, showing the dates the approval starts and ends. Copies of the stamp-dated forms must be used for all subjects and parents.

Once your psych-pool application has been reviewed and approved in the Psych department, it will be forwarded by the department to the UCAIHS for review. The UCAIHS meets twice a month. Completion of the review and approval process can take 3 to 4 weeks, so plan accordingly. Information on the UCAIHS and its meeting schedule can be found on the UCAIHS website.

Risks and Wrongs

Why, and how you should take the IRB seriously. Risks and Wrongs in Social Science Research: An Evaluator’s Guide to the IRB. “Having an Institutional Review Board (IRB) review and monitor the use of human subjects is now fundamental to ethical research. Yet social scientists appear increasingly frustrated with the process. This article aims to assist evaluators struggling to understand and work with IRBs. The author theorizes why IRBs frustrate and insists there is only one remedy. We must accept the legitimacy of IRB review and (a) learn more about IRB regulations, imperatives, and the new pressures on them; and (b) educate IRBs about social scientific methodologies and empirically demonstrable risks. A research agenda and tips are offered.”