Research participants' guide to using Sona (slide show) | Log in to Sona
Instructors get your class listed | Current size of the participant pool
Instructions for the Sona Administrator
(i) Deadlines and Final Credit Reports.
(ii) For Students Seeking Credit.
(iii) For Researchers and Instructors.
GETTING CLASSES LISTED IN SONA. Instructors and TAs should go here to get their class(es) listed for the upcoming term. In the interest of efficiency, it is best to do this at least two business days prior to the first day of the semester.
STUDENT REGISTRATION IN SONA. Undergraduate students (in participating classes) should register in the Sona system sometime during the 2nd week of classes.
PROMPTLY ASSIGN CREDIT. Researchers need to assign credit shortly after the participant completes the study (not at the end of the semester).
PARTICIPATION DEADLINE. Students must fully complete their participation by the Sunday PRIOR to the last week of classes. The Sona system will be configured to prevent the creation of time slots that extend past the participation deadline.
Note: Researchers are not required to continue enrolling participants all the way through the semester. So students should complete their participation well BEFORE the last week of classes, to avoid losing out on the opportunity to participate.
CREDIT DEADLINE. Researchers must award all credit, and mark no-shows as no-shows, by 11:59 pm on Monday of the last week of classes.
STUDENTS MUST CHECK THEIR CREDITS. By Thursday of the last week of classes, research participants should make sure all of their credits are properly recorded and are assigned to a course.
CREDIT RE-ASSIGNMENT DEADLINE. After Thursday of the last week of classes, credits can no longer be re-assigned from one course to another.
REPORT GENERATION. Instructors or teaching assistants should wait until Friday of the last week of classes to generate their own final credit reports (by logging into Sona as an instructor [not as a researcher]). Both the TA and the instructor of record can access the report.
How do I get a Sona account?
Get an account here.
How Do I Interpret the List of Classes
Each section (and each recitation section) of each class has it's own entry. For example:
Jones (TA: Smith) Psyc1010.Recit.1208
means the class's instructor is 'Jones,' the teaching assistant is 'Smith,' and the recitation section is 1208.
I participated in research. So why aren't my research credits showing up in my account?
Typically, each researcher has to manually add your credits into the system before they will show up in the system. You should give the researcher a week, after you finish a study, to get your credit(s) entered. If a week has already passed, please contact the individual researcher (click the title of a study to view the researcher's email address). Only if that doesn't work should you report the problem to the site administrator.
I'm trying to select the class that I want my credit to count for, but I don't see my class. Why isn't it on the list?
Not all instructors offer Sona credit in their classes. Please contact your instructor for further information.
I selected the wrong class when registering in Sona, or I would like to select more than one class.
Once you have logged into Sona, you will see a set of instructions titled "Change Course Selections. If you follow those instructions, you will be able to change your course selections and reassign Sona credits to a different course.
If I can get research credit in more than one course, which credits will count toward which courses?
The participant must select all of the classes (and only those classes) in which he/she is registered AND that offer credit for research participation (select "Profile", and select the link that allows you to modify your course selections). When you sign up for a study, you will be required to indicate which course the credit should count toward (if you can get credit in more than one course). If you participate in a study without having signed up for that study through this online system, the researcher will assign your credit, but you have to then decide how to allocate the credits across your classes. To do this, select "My Schedule and Credits; View Studies I've Participated In; Re-assign". On the last day of classes, you (the participant) should check to make sure all credit has been appropriately allocated. Each earned Sona credit counts toward one class only.
Credits cannot double-count.
What's the "I won't get credit" course about?
Some participants aren't taking any classes that allow them to earn research credit, but would like to volunteer anyway--either out of the goodness of their hearts or because they would like to participate in a study that might offer monetary payment rather than credit. When they log into their accounts for the first time, they'll still be forced to choose at least one class. So they may select the "I won't get credit" class. It's important to remember that "I won't get credit" really means that you won't get credit. If your instructor has told you you can get credit but your class isn't listed in this system, you should remind the instructor that he/she needs to get the class listed. Once it's listed, it will be your responsibility to move any research credits that you want to count for that class into that class. See the other entries in this F.A.Q. for instructions on how to do that.
What should I know about server delay while configuring my Sona listing?
When you make a study visible to potential volunteers by setting the HSRB approval, by activating the study, and/or by adding time slots, you actions may not take effect immediately. It may take several minutes for the Sona server to register your changes and make the study listing visible.
How do researchers and instructors get a Sona account?
Researchers and instructors should already have Sona accounts. If you don't have an account, contact the Sona administrator: Rich Anderson, randers@bgsu.edu
How do I arrange for undergraduate researchers to run studies?
First, send the undergraduate researcher's name and BGSU email address to the Sona site administrator. The administrator will then add a "researcher's role" to the student's existing Sona account, or create a new account for the student if student does not yet have a researcher's account. To enable the student researcher to schedule appointments for you study, you have two options. Your first option is to add the special researcher as a researcher in a study listing that you have already set up (select your study, select "Change Study Information," the see the "Researcher" field, including the instructions related to selecting multiple researchers. Your second option is to simply let the special researcher create his or her own, separate experiment listing from scratch.
Why can't students see my study listed in Sona?
First, in the "study information," you need to have selected "approved" and "available."
Second, you must have at least one time slot, even if it's a web study (for web studies, it's OK to have just a single time slot that accommodates a large number of participants).
Third, it may take the server a few hours to update the list of studies that potential participants see.
How do I get a Sona course-credit report?
Simply log into Sona as an instructor. Both the instructor and the teaching assistants can access the reports.
Credit reports can be accessed from the first day of classes through the end of final exams week.
If I'm an instructor, how do I get my class included in Sona's list of courses?
Go to: For instructors and teaching assistants only: Getting your class listed in Sona
What is the policy on subject-pool usage?
The policy is here.
How promptly should researchers award credits?
Researchers should award credit within a couple of days (and no more than a week) of the participant completing a session.
How do researchers create time slots for a web-based study?
Even web studies need to have at least one time slot. If your study is a web study, create one time slot with 'n' number of participants allowed to sign up in that slot (where 'n' is the maximum number of participants you expect to have). The date of the time slot should be the latest date on which you will collect data in the study.
How does a researcher arrange for participants to receive an automatic reminder of their upcoming appointments?
The Sona system is configured so that participants automatically receive an email reminder 24 hrs prior to their scheduled appointment.
How does a researcher correct an incorrect granting of credit?
Select My Studies, then Timeslots, then Modify.
How and when should a researcher count a participant as a no-show?
When a participant does not show up for a scheduled appointment, you should either count it as a "no show," which will permit the participant to sign up again at a later time, or you should grant zero credit. To perform either of these actions, select My Studies, then View My Uncredited Timeslots. Then click the date/time of the time slot. For a particular participant. Select "No-Show," or change the to-be-awarded credit amount to zero. Then select, "update signups." The Sona system configuration is such that it makes no difference whether the no-shows are excused or unexcused. A no-show does not count for credit, but neither is it penalized.
How does a researcher grant zero credits to a participant?
When a participant does not show up for a scheduled appointment, you should either count it as a "no show," which will permit the participant to sign up again at a later time, or you should grant zero credit. To perform either of these actions, select My Studies, then View My Uncredited Timeslots. Then click the date/time of the time slot. For a particular participant. Select "No-Show," or change the to-be-awarded credit amount to zero. Then select, "update signups."
How many credits should a study be worth?
Participation may count as extra credit or as an option for fulfilling a course requirement. Instructors who permit research credit must also provide an alternative means of earning such credit, for those students who do not wish to be research subjects. Credit should be assigned at a rate of one-half (0.5) credit per 30 minutes of participation, with 0.5 being the minimum credit increment.
If it is a face-to-face rather than an online study, it is the department's policy to allow the researcher to award an extra 30 minutes of credit to account for the participant's travel time.
If an instructor has a policy of only granting credit for sessions designed to exceed a minimum length, the instructor should notify the subject pool administrator, who will then post the instructor-specific policy on the research-scheduling web site.
For online external studies (administered by Survey Monkey, Qualtrics, etc.) how does the researcher know who has participated in the study?
Options:
(1) At the end of the survey, have your non-Sona survey software automatically forward the participant to another survey whose sole function is to collect the participant's name and BGSU email address. (Simply trust the participant to access and complete the form only if he/she has actually participated.) You can then compare this information to the Sona credit-requests you receive to make sure those who have signed-up to get credit have actually earned the credit.
(2) Alternatively, you can set-up your Sona listing so that it (a) provides the Survey link freely as part of the study's description (rather than in the field specifically designed to accommodate the link), and (b) requires an invitation code. At the end of the questionnaire, the invitation code can be presented and participants can be asked to go back to Sona and use the code to sign-up for the study. This method can be difficult to clearly describe to participants since it uses Sona in an unconventional way.
(3) You may attempt to use Sona's automatic credit-granting feature, as described in Automatic Methods, below.
What methods can researchers use to assign credits to participants?
You can only assign credit to participants who have registered themselves in the Sona system. Therefore, if you recruit participants by going directly to a classroom, or by some other method outside the Sona system, there is a risk that you could recruit and run participants who are not registered. If you find that you have run such a participant, you must inform the participant that credit cannot be awarded until he or she registers, and you must assign the credit once the participant registers.
Typical, Non-Automatic Methods
To assign credit using the regular method: (1) Select MY STUDIES (or MY STUDIES, GRANT OR DENY PARTICIPATION CREDIT), (2) Select VIEW YOUR UNCREDITED TIME SLOTS, (3) check GRANT CREDIT (beside each slot for which you want to grant credit), (4) click the GRANT CREDITS button.
Use the batch method to assign participants who *are* registered in Sona but who are *not* already signed up for your study:
(1) Create a new "regular" (not online) study listing in Sona, and make it UNavailable to participants.
(2) Add a new time slot and set the number of participants to 50 (you can only batch-add credit for 50 participants at a time).
(3) Click Modify Timeslot.
(4) In the Manual Sign-Up section you will see a Batch Credit Grant link (do NOT use the username or last-name manual sign-up fields).
(5) After clicking the Batch Credit Grant link, you will be prompted to provide the list of User IDs of users you would to whom you would like to grant credit. Users will be signed up and credited immediately. The batch credit feature overrides any sign-up restrictions on the study (just as Manual Sign-up does).
If you need to batch-credit additional participants, create a new time slot for that purpose and repeat the steps above.
Automatic Methods
Main Automatic Method: Sona provides a way to set-up automatic credit granting, for Qualtrics surveys and experiments. However, it requires you to alter--on a study-by-study basis--some of settings both in Sona and in Qualtrics. Moreover, the Sona-provided instructions include some contradictions and inaccuracies. If you want to try to setup automatic credit granting, you should follow the instructions I've provided at this link. (Note that Sona Provides its own, similar instruction page at a different link: https://www.sona-systems.com/help/qualtrics/ ). Once you've set things up properly, you may still receive notices that you have uncredited time slots. But in such cases you should wait for the system to automatically award credit (when the participant has finished the online survey or experiment) rather than award the credit manually.
Alternative Automatic Method: You may use Sona's built-in survey feature, credit is granted automatically once a participant completes the questionnaire. However, the built-in survey software is quite limited in functionality. See additional limitations, below.
As of the year 2020, the built-in survey software was inflexible and had a complex user interface. In addition, the Sona server had a 15-minute timeout, meaning that if a participant spent more than 15 minutes on any given page of a SONA survey, the participant would automatically be logged out, and the participant's data would be lost be lost. The one advantage of using the built-in survey software is that it makes credit-granting automatic rather than something the researcher has to do manually. Instructions for using the built-in survey software are included in the full Sona documentation at http://www.sona-systems.com/support/docs/ems_docs.pdf (Links to an external site.)
For researchers: Why isn't my study appearing in the list of available studies?
For your study to appear in the list, the Study Information must include all of the following:
An HSRB approval code (or if the study is a class project, the phrase, "class project," plus the course name/number and instructor name--e.g., "Class Project for Psyc 322, Anderson").
An HSRB approval expiration date that has not passed (Select "approved;" Select "available").
Designation that the study is "Active."
For researchers: How do I DELETE a study?
According to the Sona documentation: "You may delete a study only if there are no pending sign-ups (awaiting action) or active (non-zero) credits linked to it. If you need to delete a study that already has pending sign-ups or active credit grants, a better option may be to make it Inactive if you do not want it to be visible to participants. If you want to delete a study that has sign-ups and are unable to do so, please contact the administrator. The administrator can delete a study with sign-ups, but only if the sign-ups are all without credit values (this usually occurs when study participation history from a previous semester was retained, but credits were zeroed out). If the study has sign-ups where the sign-ups have (nonzero) credit values linked to them, then the administrator cannot delete the study until all those credit grants are changed to a 0 value (or the participants for the sign-ups are deleted). This restriction is to ensure that the credit count for participants and where they have earned credits is accurate. This also means that the studies that contributed to their credit earnings must be kept intact."
For researchers: Why can't I use Sona's pre-screening capability with my study?
A "pre-screening" questionnaire would be one that is automatically given to subjects, regardless of whose study they are in, and the responses would be used to establish which subjects are eligible to complete which studies. The department has not established such a standard, pre-screening instrument. Therefore, we are not using SONA's pre-screening feature. You are free to use a screening procedure for your own studies, but that screening would be part of the particular research protocol for your particular study.
For researchers: May I recruit subjects for a class project rather than for real research?
Yes. Instead of entering an HSRB approval number, enter the phrase, "Class Project," plus the course name/number and instructor's name (e.g., "Class Project for Psyc 322, Anderson"). You must still specify an approval date that has not passed.Please be judicious in your use of the subject pool for class projects.
What are the confidentiality/anonymity issues related to the use of Sona?
If you are a researcher who uses Sona to direct participants to an external survey, such as one created in Survey Gizmo or Survey Monkey, you may be wondering how you know whether a student who asks for credit has actually completed the study. You may also be wondering about how to keep the participant's data anonymous or how to keep it confidential. Here are some answers from the Sona site administrator.
When I have an online study implemented in something like Qualtrics, I include the Qualtrics questionnaire URL in the Sona listing, and then have the questionnaire end by redirecting the participant to a web page that asks the participant to notify me that he/she has completed the study. So I simply trust that the subject is being truthful about having completed the study. In that way, participation is anonymous.
The Sona site does describe a method whereby you can have Sona pass a subject identifier code into Qualtrics (see "What methods can researchers use to assign credits to participants?"). Alternatively, Sona has built-in survey software functionality.
If you pass subject-identifier information between Sona and an external survey system, or if you use Sona's internal survey system, the data are no longer anonymous. In that case, I would describe the confidentiality procedures as follows: "Your data will be kept confidential. It will be stored in such a way that your name is attached to it. However, that information will be kept in a password-protected data system that can only be accesses by the researchers and the computer database administrators. Please be assured that any publication of the data will not have your name or any other personal identifier attached to it."
In addition, here is some language from an IRB approved study (#H10E365FFB) concerning Sona's default behavior when collecting data via an online survey system such as Qualtrics:
"The way Sona works is as follows. The system collects identifying information from participants. If the participant volunteers to be in a traditional (not online) study, Sona schedules the participant for an appointment. After the participant goes to the appointed location at the appointed time, the researcher assigns the participant credit through Sona. Thus in this case, Sona collects identifying information for the appointment, but does not expose the participant to a research procedure. Thus, if the research procedures do not connect a participant’s identity to the data the participant produces, the data are anonymous (despite the fact that the participant was scheduled for an appointment via Sona, and despite the fact that Sona collects identifying information). For online studies, Sona can be used either as an appointment scheduler only (which is true in the vast majority, if not all cases), or as an appointment scheduler plus survey software. For my proposed study, Sona is an appointment scheduler only—meaning that when a prospective participants signs up to be in the study, his or her identifying information is collected and he or she is automatically given the web address for an experiment that runs on server software that is separate from and not connected to Sona. That non-Sona system does not collect any identifying information and therefore does not yield data files that are linked to a particular participant’s identity. At the conclusion of the research session, the participant is directed to yet another server (my BGSU web site), where they are asked to enter their identifying information to tell us that they participated in the study. We trust them to tell us that they participated only if they, in fact participated. However, my web site is separate from the system that conducts the participant through the research procedures. Consequently my web site does not connect participants’ identifying information to their respective data sets. Ultimately, when I access and download participants’ data, the dataset does not include participants’ identifying information and therefore does not connect their individual identities to their individual data sets. In my study, the researcher credits individual participants as having participated on the basis of their claims that they have participated, not based on individual identifiers being connected to individual data sets. The record of particular person's having participated in the study is stored on secure, password-protected servers. But the research data themselves are anonymous. For participants who do not use the Sona system, it is not the case that they will provide any identifying information. Rather they will provide no identifying information at all. In summary, the study does not produce data that are identified as having come from a particular person."
Standard course listing format: Jones (TA: Smith) Psyc1010.Recit.1002