Fundamentally, the SRP is a formalized, centralized process to facilitate recruitment for academic research. However, it is not a recruitment system for research assistants (RA).
No. The SRP is meant to complement these other research tools, as a method for recruiting participants.
During the initial launch of the SRP, the subject pool will consist of students from across the university currently enrolled in select Marketing courses. The current courses included in the SRP range from 1st to 4th-year courses and include over 2,600 potential participants. The students in these courses are not exclusively Marketing majors or minors and are not even exclusively Ted Rogers School students – we have students from a variety of faculties across campus.
The SRP uses an opt-in procedure, whereby interested students will choose to participate and will not be obligated to do so. In exchange for participation, students will be eligible to earn up to a 2% bonus in a single participating course. Bonus credit will be earned at a rate of 0.25% for every 15 minutes of research time completed.
Access to the SRP is open to all RFA members in the Ted Rogers School and Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) members conducting academic research. The SRP will also be made available to graduate students but will require their supervisors to monitor any studies to ensure proper, ethical conduct. Ted Rogers School Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE), Unit 1 Contract Lecturers can contact the SRP admin at mpyle@torontomu.ca to get added to SONA as a researcher.
At the beginning of each semester, a call for requesting participants will go out to all eligible researchers. At this point, you will need to estimate how many participants you will require for the studies you plan to run during that semester, including the studies of any supervised graduate students. We will be automatically creating accounts in the SONA system for every RFA member and once you are allocated hours, you can begin recruiting. Ted Rogers School Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE), Unit 1 Contract Lecturers can contact the SRP admin at mpyle@torontomu.ca to get added to SONA as a researcher.
SONA is a scheduling software suite specifically designed for universities to manage research participation. The solution is cloud-based to increase ease of access, but we have paid for the option to have all hosting servers located in Canada to maintain exclusion from US privacy and access-to-information laws.
Use the Researcher SONA Documentation, for those who would like to self-teach.
Any research involving human participants, regardless of method, can benefit by recruiting through the SRP as long as your research does not require a specific set of characteristics not possessed by student participants (e.g., if you require access to CEOs of major corporations, the SRP is not likely to be suitable).
How you choose to conduct your research is completely up to you. You can recruit through the SONA system and either provide a date, time and location where participants must arrive to participate or you can use the system to distribute a link for an online study using any software of your choice.
The SRP is only a recruiting tool and is not directly involved in approving or reviewing studies. If your research would normally require ethical clearance, as determined by the Tri-Council Policy Statement: Ethical Conduct for Research Involving Humans, then you will still require Research Ethics Board (REB) clearance.
You can simply state that the recruitment will occur through the Ted Rogers School SRP. We have been working and coordinating with the REB members to ensure transparency and ethical processes, and the REB is familiar with the SRP. Therefore, you do not need to go into detail regarding how the SRP actually works.
There is no limit to how many participants you can request. We will consider all requests and compare them with our available courses and students and do our best to make sure you have as many participants as required, while balancing the needs of all researchers. We do ask that you do your best to provide a realistic estimate of how many studies/participants you will use, as we also have a responsibility to provide the opportunity for students to earn the bonus.
You may start recruiting for your studies as soon as you have been allocated your hours. As this is a new program, there may be some delay before students are aware of the opportunity and begin to register for studies, though. At the beginning of each semester, we will be visiting each class where the instructor has agreed to offer a bonus mark for SRP participation to inform students about the opportunity and provide instructions regarding how to participate.
For now, we are limiting the SRP availability to Fall and Winter semesters only. Studies will need to be completed by the last week of each semester. For example, the last day of Fall full- and part-time classes is December 6, 2021. Therefore, all studies will need to be complete by this date, in order to provide sufficient time to organize the participation data and distribute it to the relevant instructors so that they can add bonus marks for participation.
You will need to use the research software to determine participation. Participants will enter a unique identifier that you will need to collect as part of your study. Once the study is complete you will need to go into the SONA system and cross-check the actual participants with those who signed up, to give appropriate credit.
For privacy reasons, you cannot follow specific participants through this system. However, if you are planning a multi-stage study, you can set the prerequisites so that participants can only sign up if they have completed a particular study (e.g., your initial test). Conversely, you can also exclude participants who have already completed your study or a similar study.
Access to the SRP is limited to researchers associated with the Ted Rogers School and therefore external people will not be allowed to recruit using this system.
According to Tri-Council ethics documents, urging your students to sign up for a particular study could be considered a form of coercion. However, a general encouragement to participate in the SRP, for educational purposes, will help inform students of the options and benefits of participation.
The Tri-Council Policy Statement: Ethical Conduct for Research Involving Humans explicitly states that participants have the right to withdraw at any time from a study, without penalty. Therefore, you must give credit to students regardless of whether or not they completed all questions.
We are, however, concerned with maintaining the credibility of the SRP and avoiding having participants ‘game’ the system. We are asking that you take note of participants who may be attempting to undermine the SRP in order to receive credits, as compared to those who genuinely decided to withdraw for valid reasons. Examples of ‘gaming’ behavior includes straight-line answering (e.g., all ‘3’s on a 5-point scale), completing a study in a sufficiently short time that it would be impossible to have actually read and considered questions or simply entering their ID number, consenting and answering no questions. If you suspect such behavior, please report the participant’s ID number and behavior to the SRP admin at mpyle@torontomu.ca. We will track these incidents to determine if patterns exist.
Assuming that you have been allocated hours and have proper ethical clearance, then you can post your study as soon as the school semester begins.
The short answer is ‘no’, as allowing some researchers to pay students will unduly make some studies more attractive to participants.
However, under certain circumstances, you may be allowed to offer additional payment beyond the bonus marks. For example, if your study requires that participants travel to an offsite location, you may be allowed to reimburse them for travel costs. Or, if your study will exceed two hours (the maximum amount of participation in exchange for credits), you may need to offer additional compensation. If you feel that it is necessary to pay participants, you must first email the SRP admin at mpyle@torontomu.ca with your request and rationale, and we will deal with such situations on a case-by-case basis.