Information for Researchers

RESEARCHERS (faculty, instructors, graduate students, and undergraduate students) from the School of Communication (SoC) wishing to use students enrolled in courses within the SoC as participants in research should carefully read the following, then fill out the 'Research Study Submission Form' (located on the sidebar) as soon as possible to maximize potential participation. The following guidelines are to assist you in conducting your research.



ETHICS & COMPLIANCE

Researchers should be familiar with and follow Federal (http://www.hhs.gov/ohrp/humansubjects/guidance/45cfr46.html) and Illinois State (https://research.illinoisstate.edu/ethics/human-subjects/policy/) regulations regarding the use of human subjects. For class research projects, you may find the "Student-Led Research Activities" portion of this website of interest. When applicable, investigators planning to use human subjects in research are responsible for obtaining ''approval' from the IRB prior to conducting research involving human subjects, taking whatever steps are deemed necessary to protect subjects, and abiding by reporting requirements of the IRB.

OPPORTUNITY

  1. Consider the population you are seeking to study. This research is made available to all students enrolled in courses offered by the School of Communication and as such researchers seeking to announce studies via the Research Announcement Board should seek broad demographics from a college-aged sample. If your study requires that participants meet a certain and extremely limited criteria (e.g., participants are only sought if they are hearing-impaired females between the ages of 56-62 who speak fluent Russian), you may have greater success seeking participants from another recruitment tool that better-matches your desired sample. Access to limited, but broad categories (e.g., just females or children with divorced parents) will be allowed on as determined by the SoC Research Board Committee. The Research Announcement Board attempts to facilitate research that addresses the widest possible cross-section of human communication; so you are requested to be prepared to use alternate non-research assignments for those not eligible (e.g., not yet 18 years of age) or not selecting to participate in your particular study.

  2. Because of the high demand for participation credit, the presumption of the SoC Research Board Committee is that any given research study will be made available for credit across all participating courses during a given semester. If you require participation only from students in a particular course (e.g., lower division, COM 161), you must make this clear in your request on the Research Study Submission Form.

  3. In addition, students who are taking more than one (1) communication course at the same time MUST CHOOSE to which class they want their participation applied (i.e., they may NOT get credit in two classes for participation in one study). If your study can be completed multiple times by the same participant, you must make it clear in your request that multiple participation is acceptable. You, as a researcher, must keep track of which participants come from which class (see Record Keeping below).

  4. Be sure to collect ONLY your needed sample size. It is your responsibility to track how many students participate and to close your study when you have reached your needed sample size. If you collect data beyond your needed amount (e.g., 500 participants), you are affecting another researcher's ability to gather needed participants. Questions about appropriate sample sizes for studies can be directed to quantitative faculty members within the School of Communication.

AMOUNT OF RESEARCH CREDIT

"Research Credit" is a term that is used to quantify research participation, and does not inherently reflect course [extra] credit as a result of participation. Course [extra] credit derived from research participation is determined by each courses' instructor and the course syllabus. Please refer all participant questions regarding course credit to their course instructor. One (1) Research Credit is equitable to an estimated one hour of effort (including travel) for a participant to take part in the study.

Participants receive Research Credit (RC) based on the nearest half-hour of participation, so the Committee will need to know how much time it will take students to complete your survey or experiment. If your study takes 15 minutes to complete, students should be awarded 30 minutes (½ hour) of research credit (i.e. 0.5 RCs). If your study takes 45 minutes to complete, students should receive 1 hour of research credit (i.e. 1 RC). Additionally, if your study is an involved laboratory experiment, please factor in the time it would take students to arrive to your study, participate, debrief, and return to their original destination.

RECRUITING PARTICIPANTS

  1. You must request your study be posted on the School of Communication Research Study Announcement Board website. To provide a fair and ethical research experience, students are not to be solicited for individual studies directly but given the opportunity to choose which studies they participate in as advertised on this website. The website will announce: the name of your study, how much credit it is worth (e.g., ½ research credit), how to participate, study restrictions, and roughly when your study will be run. Do not expect TAs or Instructors to be able to provide information to students about your study.

  2. Do not expect Instructors or GTAs to administer any part of your study apart from a simple announcement to students that your study is posted on the School of Communication Research Study Announcement Board website.

  3. Be sure that your study observes all relevant ethics requirements (e.g., consent forms, confidentiality), including in your recruitment messages.

RECORD KEEPING

Instructors and/or GTAs are not responsible for knowing who participated in your study until you provide them with the Credit List. To report participation correctly, you must provide each Instructor or GTA an separate, alphabetized Excel list of the students who have earned credit in their course. Please refer to the template at the bottom of this section. In addition to the name of the study and how many half-hours of Research Credit your study was worth, you will need to collect the information for each individual participant:

  • First Name of Student

  • Last Name of Student (separate from first name, to be sortable)

  • ULID of Student

  • Course Number

  • Section Number

  • Instructor for that Course/Section

  • Date that research project was completed

Participant Completion Qualtrics Template

For those utilizing Qualtrics to collect data, below is a template for an independent survey that can be used to collect the required information for participants, and to additional output in a format that's easily cut-and-pastable into the reporting form (see below). For information on how to import survey files into your Qualtrics account, please see the Qualtrics FAQ here.

A Qualtrics participant identifier template for your use to collect participant information. is available at:
https://calebtcarr.com/research/CompletionTemplate.qsf (Right-click and select "Save Link As")

Participant Reporting Sheet Template

Individualized participant sheets should be provided for each instructor of record for each course of theirs only from which participants take part in your study. Participant sheets should be in Excel format and clearly present the name of the study (as listed on the Announcement Board), the researcher(s), the Research Credits associated with participation, a brief lay description of the study, and the required information identified above.

An Excel template is available here for your use as a participant reporting tool.


IRB Language for IRB Documents and Course Syllabi

To help instructors and researchers integrate the School of Communication Research Study Announcement Board into their research protocols and courses, the following templates are provided to give you an initial framework. However, these forms are intended to be illustrative--please bear in mind you should adapt the forms as necessary or appropriate for your specific study, protocol, or course.

IRB Document Language

IRB Protocol III.B.1.d. Participant contact information will not be obtained--the study is being posted in a publicly-available venue. Upon completion of the study, participants enrolled in courses for which participation may be eligible for extra credit will be directed to a separate survey to provide identifying information to report class participation to course instructors; but this information cannot be linked to specific response sets in the data.

IRB Protocol III.B.1.e. The researcher(s) will recruit potential participants by posting the study call for participation (attached) to a publicly-available online announcement board. Potential participants will then self-select to seek more information and take part in the study following the instructions provided in the CFP.

IRB Protocol III.B.2.b.iii. Undue influence will be minimized by making available alternate, equitable, non-research based opportunities, provided at the discretion of course instructors. As non-students participating will receive no direct benefit, no alternatives will be offered to students whose courses do not offer extra credit for research participation, as there is no influence involved.

Call for Participant Verbiage. The study will be announced by posting to a digital announcement board, publicly accessible and announced in class syllabi by several faculty in the School of Communication.


Course Syllabi Language

Research Participation - Extra Credit

There will be a few extra credit opportunities for research participation. The extra credit points will be added to your final grade, and may not necessarily appear in the gradebook immediately upon your completion of the opportunity. There are no guarantees for extra credit, and it is each student’s responsibility to be aware of and take advantage of such opportunities. You may receive extra credit for participating in any of the studies posted to the School of Communication’s Research Announcement Board. The Research Announcement Board is updated as research studies are opened/closed, and it is your responsibility to access the Board and be aware of available opportunities. The Research Announcement Board can be accessed via: https://sites.google.com/site/ilstusocstudies

In general, each 30 minutes of participation in an extra credit study will earn you .5 Research Credits, but please see the call for participants for the Research Credits associated with each study. Each Research Credit is worth an additional 10 points toward your total possible final grade in this course. For example, if you participate in a research study worth .5 Research Credit, your participation would provide 5 points to your final grade. Each project listed on the Research Announcement Board will indicate the specific number of Research Credits associated with the project. The course instructor will get evidence of participation and the time of participation from the researcher(s) who administer the research studies at the conclusion of the semester; however, it is your responsibility to make sure that the researchers have the necessary evidence of your participation at the time of the study. Before participating in a study, please be sure to have your name, ULID (i.e., the part of your email before @ilstu.edu), instructor name, and course and section number ready, as you will need to provide these to receive credit. Research Credit can only be applied to one course for each study, unless specified otherwise on the Research Announcement Board. A maximum of 4.5% of your final course grade (i.e., 45 points) can be earned from extra credit opportunities via the Research Announcement Board. After the final exam there will be no further opportunities for extra credit or to otherwise improve your grade.

Research Participation - Required

Given that you will be conducting original research in this course, it’s only fair you help someone else with their research. Consequently, during the course of the semester, you are required to take part in at least one study posted to the School of Communication Research Announcement Board (https://sites.google.com/site/ilstusocstudies). You may participate in an online or offline study of any length, but if you’re going to be asking for others to complete a study, some reciprocity is appreciated. There’s no credit associated with completion; but you are expected to act in a scholarly and collegial manner, and must take part in at least one study to be able to complete the course.

Alternate Opportunities - SoC Alternatives

There may be some studies for which you are not eligible (e.g., recruiting based on gender or family structure) or in which you do not wish to take part. Reasonable alternatives are available for those not able or wanting to take part in specific studies, to ensure equitable non-research based opportunities. For each available study in which you would like to complete an alternate assignment, please contact the instructor, who will assign a journal from which to identify and provide an annotated bibliography to the researcher consistent with the description on the Alternate Opportunities page (https://sites.google.com/site/ilstusocstudies/home/students/alternates) of the Board. You must complete and submit the research report to the researcher before the date the study closes--late submissions are not accepted. Alternate opportunities will be scaled by the course instructor to ensure commensurate time commitment and course credit with the research-based opportunity.

Alternate Opportunities - Instructor Discretion

There may be some studies for which you are not eligible (e.g., recruiting based on gender or family structure) or in which you do not wish to take part. Reasonable alternatives are available for those not able or wanting to take part in specific studies, to ensure equitable non-research based opportunities. Throughout the semester, the instructor will announce non-research opportunities for extra credit, which may include attending a colloquium, reading a recent article or research paper, or attending an on-campus event and writing a summary of the connection of the event to course content. The instructor will make these opportunities and specific details available as they arise.