Syllabus Statement

Research Participation Requirement: An important goal of this course will involve instilling in you an appreciation of the research process and scientific approach.  Since the material that you will learn in this course is based on experimental psychology, I would like you to contribute to the research community by participating firsthand in the research process.  All students enrolled in this course are expected to participate in two social science experiments. The purpose of this requirement is twofold: 1) to help WPI faculty conduct research, and 2) to give you a better understanding of what research participants experience. Certain ethical guidelines govern this research. 

How Do I Complete This Requirement?  You can sign up for experiments via an Experiment Scheduling Website call Sona-Systems, or you can complete an Alternative Assignment (see below).  This must be completed by the last day of class!

How Do I Sign-Up For Experiments?  First, you will need to create an account on Sona-Systems (see instructions below).  Be sure to indicate that you need to credits for this course.  After you create the login account, you will be able to click on available studies and see what timeslots are available that fit your schedule.  Then you can sign up.  Please note:  If not studies are available, keep checking, if all the timeslots are taken, the studies will not show up on the list of available studies—as all the sessions are full. 

Research Appointments: It is important when participating in research experiments to show up on-time for the scheduled experiment.  If you realize you cannot attend the experiment, you must cancel your appointment at least 1 hour prior to the appointment.  Failure to show-up (or adequately cancel) an appointment will result in a research credit penalty.  You can remove this penalty by completing an additional experiment.  For instance, if you miss one appointment you will need to participate in 3 experiments to fulfill the requirement instead of two. 

Participant Rights:  Your rights as a participant in research are paramount. Upon arriving at a study, you should expect to be asked to provide written informed consent before participating. This consent form indicates that you understand what to expect in the study, and you agree to participate.  If you decide that you are uncomfortable participating in the experiment, you may decline participating in the experiment at anytime and you will still earn credit for participating.  However, you must show up for the experiment in order to earn credit.  After the study is over, you should be debriefed, meaning that the experimenter tells you what the study was examining, either verbally or in writing. You also have the right to learn the overall findings (but not individual feedback) of the study when it is completed. Talk to the experimenter if this interests you.  If the experimenter fails to show up for the experiment, you will still earn full credit for the experiment.  Please contact the experimenter and the Participant Pool Chair, Professor Skorinko (skorinko@wpi.edu) if this occurs. 

Alternative Assignment:  You also have the right to not participate in experiments.  If you prefer not to take part in the research experiments, you may complete an alternative assignment to earn credit.  For this alternative assignment, you will need read and summarize empirical social psychological articles found in either: the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, or the Journal of Applied Social Psychology.  Each article summary will earn you one credit, and it should take about 1 hour to complete each summary. Complete comprehension of all of the statistical analyses in the results section is not necessary. The authors usually summarize the findings in English at the beginning of the discussion section.  Each assignment is checked for plagiarism and the WPI Academic Honesty policy is in effect for this assignment.  For further instructions on this assignment, please see the instructions and template posted on myWPI. 

Grade/Penalty:  As it is impossible and unfair to grade your performance as a participant, you will not receive a grade for this experience but rather a failure to complete this requirement will result in a reduction of your final grade.  Each experiment is worth 1 percentage point of your final grade. Thus if you earn a 90% in the course but fail to complete the two experiments required, your final grade will be reduced to an 88%.  Note: not making up penalties incurred by no-showing to experiments can result in additional final grade deductions.    

Extra Credit Opportunities:  After completing your research requirement, any additional experiments you participate in will earn you extra credit.  In addition, throughout the term, the professor may ask you to participate in some short surveys.  Since this will be very short surveys, they will not be able to fulfill the research requirement, but will enable you to earn extra credit. The amount of credit may vary depending on the length of the experiment (e.g., a longer experiment will be worth more extra credit than a shorter one). Completing additional alternative assignments will not earn you extra credit. 

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Last modified: December 02, 2008 17:26:37