For the students I work with, I offer the option of conducting their study via the IU participant pool. This saves you time because you do not have to recruit participants yourself, and the participants are usually somewhat more motivated because they receive participation credits. Please note, however, that this pool consists of young participants who are studying psychology.
Ask me for an account for the survey tool.
Once you have received the login details, you can continue.
Download the survey template here: https://nextcloud.banto.co/index.php/s/jNpDEed7Tzgr5zS
Log in at https://limesurvey.banto.co/index.php/admin. Go to List Surveys → Create a new survey → Import. Select the downloaded template file and upload it. Click OK and select the newly created questionnaire. It will probably be called "Please enter your study title here".
In the following dialog, click Structure in the top left and then click Instructions. There you will find a short introduction.
Create and pilot your survey.
If you also want to distribute the questionnaire independently of the IU participant pool, and only in that case, please do the following: Create and use a copy of your questionnaire for distribution to participants outside the IU participant pool. To do this, go to Export for your survey and export it as an .lss file. Then create a new questionnaire, choose Import during creation, and import the exported questionnaire.
Activate your survey by clicking the Activate Survey button. In the next dialog, select the following option, which is recommended in most situations:
Closed-access mode? Select "No, thanks".
Send me an email asking me to set up the study in the participant pool. Please include the following information:
After completing the steps above, you do not need to do anything else.
I will edit your questionnaire so that it works together with Sona Systems. I will also create the corresponding entry in Sona Systems, the IU participant pool, so that students are directed to your survey. This still needs to be approved by the person responsible for the participant pool. Overall, this process takes about 7 days.
After approval, the questionnaire will automatically go online and the data will be collected. You can follow the data collection live in LimeSurvey.
When describing your study, make sure not to reveal anything that could bias participants’ behavior, meaning anything that could change their response behavior, for example because they want to give socially desirable answers. It is usually better to keep the description of your study somewhat general. You should always tell the truth, except in deception studies, which require a debriefing afterward.
In most cases, it is advisable to measure your variables at the highest possible scale level. Example: Do not ask for age using age categories. Instead, ask for age as a number, for example “Age in years”.
For Likert scales: Use the scales provided by the questionnaire. If no scale is provided, use an odd number of response options. Seven is a good number because it allows for some, but not too much, differentiation in the responses. An odd number of response options allows participants to choose a neutral answer.
Add a number to each response option, for example:
1 - not at all
2
3
4 - somewhat / neutral
5
6
7 - completelyIf you use participants from Sona Systems: Please do not use the LimeSurvey function for setting the display date, because this will be handled by Sona Systems.