Running Participants

A very common task that RAs engage in is to “run participants” or collect data from participants. When professors/researchers have studies that involve interaction with participants (e.g., students from introductory courses) in order to collect certain data from these participants, they will assign a team of RAs to do the data collection. Depending on the study, this data collection process in the lab (sometimes called “running participants”) involves greeting participants, giving participants instructions about the study, directing participants about specifics of the procedures throughout the study, and debriefing participants about the study. Sometimes, RAs act as confederates in social psychology research. Confederates are people who are involved in the research project but pretend to be other participants in order to deceive actual participants about a task. Do not worry if you do not have any experience with these types of activities. RAs are provided extensive training prior to interacting with participants. You just need to have a willingness to learn and practice.