Students conducting supervised research in Research Seminar (PSY299) must follow these steps to list a study and collect data through PIPER:
- Download and review the PIPER policy document and make sure that you understand the rules for both researchers and participants. You are responsible for running your study in a professional and fair manner for your participants.
- Work with your professor to secure ethics approval for your study from either the Psychology Department’s Research Planning & Ethics (RPE) Committee, or from TCNJ’s Institutional Review Board (IRB). You cannot access the PIPER pool and collect data until you have approval from one of these groups.
- Your professor or instructional intern may create the study for you, or your professor may make you a research assistant on his or her account so that you can create the study yourself. In any case, confirm that the approved title and description for the study is entered correctly. See the experimenter manual for guidance on how to create your own study in PIPER if you are responsible for doing so yourself.
- After you have ethics approval, contact the PIPER coordinator (piper@tcnj.edu), to request for your study to be reviewed and approved. After you receive approval, you must add occurrences and toggle the study to “visible” status so that participants can see it and sign up.
- Collect your data. Make sure that you assign credit to research participants within one week of successfully completing the study, and ideally sooner. Consult with your professor about applying strikes, if necessary.
- When you finish your data collection, toggle your study back to “not active” status so that the list of active studies in SONA is kept tidy for participants.
If you experience difficulties, speak with your professor first, then contact the PIPER coordinator, piper@tcnj.edu.