Participating in Studies on SONA

Participating in studies on SONA

Research participation in the Department of Psychology and Child Development is managed through SONA, the department’s online participant pool.

Some instructors offer their students extra credit for participating in psychology and/or child development research. In order to participate in most studies, you will need to set up a SONA participant account (if you don’t already have one).

Creating a SONA participant account and signing up for studies:

• Step 1: Sign up for a SONA participant account by clicking on “Request Account”. A unique user name (User ID) and password will be e-mailed to you from Psychology Research Sign-Up System [csustan-admin@sona-systems.net]. This e-mail may get routed to a Spam or Junk Mail folder.
• Step 2: After you receive your User ID and password, return to the above website and enter your User ID and password to activate your account.
• Step 3: After logging on please read and accept the Human Subjects/Privacy Policy.
• Step 4: Then, from the list provided, select the course (or courses) that you are enrolled in. Over the course of the semester, you will assign your earned experimental credit(s) to your selected course(s), which will then be counted toward your course extra credit. Only courses for which instructors are offering extra credit will be listed, so if your course isn’t on the list, please talk to your instructor.
• Step 5: After you activate your account, you can sign up to participate in studies by clicking on Study Sign-Up. Please note the semester due date for participating in studies on SONA. WARNING: If you have multiple roles (e.g., a researcher role in addition to a participant role), you MUST use the participant role when signing up for studies. If you don’t use the participant role, SONA will not have a record of the credit(s) you earned!
• Step 6: It is your responsibility to assign earned credits to a course for extra credit. Unassigned credits will not be automatically assigned to a course (or courses) for you. Each credit may only be assigned to one course. So, if you earn 10 credits, you may choose to assign all 10 credits to the same course, or you may, for example, assign 4 credits to one course and 6 credits to another course. But, you may not assign the same 10 credits to two different courses. Unassigned credits will expire at the end of the semester. Please note the semester due date for assigning your earned credits.

SONA dates for the Fall 2025 semester:

• Last day to participate in studies: Dec. 1
• Last day for researchers to grant earned credits to participants: Dec. 3
• Last day to assign earned credits to classes: Dec. 5

Additional information:

• The number of available studies will vary across the semester. Please check the website regularly for new experiments.
• Before signing up for an experiment, please note whether there are eligibility requirements (for example, “only female participants”).
• If you sign up for an online study, you will need to select a timeslot. The ONLY purpose of the timeslot is to provide researchers with a way to keep track of who has participated in the study and award credits. It does not mean that you are required to do anything on that time/date. It also does not mean that the study will be available until that date.
• Experimental credits are awarded by the researchers manually. It may take several days for your earned credits to appear in your account.
• Visit the SONA researcher information page if you are a student researcher interested in recruiting participants via SONA.
• If you are having trouble logging on to the website, please contact Dr. AnaMarie Guichard at aguichard@csustan.edu or Dr. Gary Williams at gwilliams1@csustan.edu