Currently we share PMD Lab’s participant database.
At the moment, we have our own CCM-specific sheet on the spreadsheet where we can add columns without messing with PMD’s existing spreadsheet - if you’re going to make any CCM-specific changes they should go here. Try to keep potential participants consistent across this and the main sheet, and keep an eye out so that we aren’t flooding the same few people with a bunch of emails.
There are columns dedicated to some participant information (that may be important to know for experiments). For many participants, this information is not all present on the sheet, but we will ask for it during the experiment. If this is the case, feel free to update the sheet with any new information; this will make recruitment easier later down the line.
There are also columns for each experiment, where you can denote outreach status for each participant. When recruiting and running experiments, be sure to keep this updated!
Finding Participants¶
HK: Some ideas include:
Presenting at clubs and classes
Finding online database that matches interested community members with studies (have to look into this to see if something like this exists for Vancouver/UBC)
Is there any way to leverage online databases for people who sign-up to do online experiments through Amazon mTurk and the like? Look into this.
Updating the List¶
Feel free to add friends to the list, making sure to fill out all the columns. Other than that, there are other means through which we may have to update the list:
When contacting participants¶
We want to be able to keep tabs on who we have contacted for what. When you’ve emailed a participant (whether it be initial outreach, confirming a visit, sending a reminder, etc), update the Last contacted column.
When a participant comes in¶
We’ve only recently started keeping track of potential participants’ gender, and for many we do not have information on handedness. This type of information may be useful in the long-run, for instance when we want to keep an even split between the sex of participants in an experiment.
When a participant comes in for a visit, there is information that we will collect from them - make a note of it and update the database!
Also, we may get participants that are not yet on the potential participants list - When participants come in and complete an experiment, ask if they are interested in coming back! And if they are, make sure they are in the database. If a participant is in the database and there are columns (i.e. handedness, gender, etc) that are not filled out, fill them out!
In summary, update the following if applicable:
Gender
Handedness
Add participant to database
Exclusion criteria¶
Keep in mind some of our exclusion criteria - some of our studies require that participants have no known history of neurological impairment, for instance. At the moment we can’t store this kind of sensitive information on a Google Sheet (which isn’t super secure), but if a participant may be ineligible make a note on the participant list along the lines of “confirm eligibility”.