Conducting Experimental Research
It is unlikely that all of this will apply to everyone. Each faculty member has lab space, in addition to the psychology department's shared facilities. For best results, talk to other members of your lab (i.e. other graduate students with the same advisor).
Facilities
- Most professors will have labs equipped with computers (platform depends on the advisor)
- There are also a number of rooms about that can be reserved for other sorts of testing (pencil & paper types of things)
- There is other equipment available... You'll probably have to work through the faculty to get access to it (talk to your advisor if you need this stuff; at least they can point you in the right direction)
- T-scopes
- Video/Audio recording/presenting
- fMRI facilities
- Eye-tracking
Participants
The most conveniently available are CMU undergrads taking psychology courses (subject pool)
- bureaucracy the subject pool
- Students in intro-level classes are required to participate in three experiments
- They may opt to write a paper instead, but the option is rarely exercised
- These students are given questionnaires at the beginning of the semester to gather demographic information
- You may submit questions to be added to these assessments
- If you are going to use the subject pool, your study has to be approved by a departmental human subjects committee
- This is different from the Institutional Review Board (IRB) approval that your experiment may also obtain
- Submit the forms to Bridget Boring
- Approval can take a couple of weeks, and the first couple of likely to need revisions, so get them in early
- You may not use the subject pool until after your study has been approved by the human subjects committee
- Once this is obtained, you will be able to post times for participants online (see below)
- Using the subject pool
- To use these participants, you will need to attend an experimenter's meeting that takes place at the beginning of each semester
- You will need to attend this meeting for each year that you are going to use the subject pool
- Recruiting participants, giving credit for participation, etc. are handled using an online system
- you can find it at http://experiment.psy.cmu.edu
- Right now, the administrator of this is Susan Kravitz, but this will be changing soon
- This system works pretty well, and if you can get past the difficulties of maneuvering through the pages, you will come to appreciate it when you talk to grad students at other schools
- The particulars of using the system are described at the experimenter's meeting (this is also when you will receive a password to use it)
- You need to request participants for each experiment using the subject pool
- You should try to get these forms completed early in the semester, especially in the Spring
- Sometimes there aren't enough participants to go around
Other places to find participants
- Depending on the advisor (and your ability to whine and beg), you may be able to pay participants
- You can thus recruit participants on cmu b-boards and flyers
- Younger participants may be available as close as on-campus
- CMU runs a preschool
- Sharon Carver is our primary liaison to that facility
- faculty also have connections with at least several local schools
- K-12
- There are also connections with other local facilities
- Acute care
- Rehabilitation
- Contacts for neuropsychological patients, normal adults, and elderly participants