Structure of the ISPR Community Pool
The Pool is made up of a few parts. The first is a database of people who have expressed interest in participating in research. These individuals are being recruited from various sources both in Ottawa as well as from further afield. The only exclusionary criterion for this pool is that participants must be at least 18 years of age. Any study conducted by researchers from the School of Psychology or the Brain and Mind Institute that has REB approval can recruit from the Community Pool. There are no constraints on what types of research can use the pool; studies can be of any length, can be online or in-person, etc. The Pool does not provide any compensation for participants, so if you have a study that asks for significant contributions of time or effort it may be necessary to provide compensation to convince members of the Pool to participate in your research.
The second aspect of the Pool is the set of mechanisms by which the volunteers find out about research opportunities. There will be three ways that participants find out about available research. First, there is a Currently available studies webpage that is maintained and publicly accessible showing all studies currently recruiting. If you would like to add a study, see the following section of this page, “Adding a study to the Community Pool list”. Any participant that comes to the Community Pool recruitment page will be able to follow the link to see the currently available studies page. The second way that participants are informed of available research is a monthly email newsletter that goes out to everyone in the database. This newsletter includes any news about the ISPR as well as containing a link to the latest updated list of available studies. Finally, if you are interested in more precise and targeted recruitment, see the below section “Recruiting specific participants through the Community Pool”.
Adding a study to the Community Pool list
If you’ve ever used the ISPR Student Pool, the process for adding a study to the Community Pool is similar except that there is no online portal where you can manage your study. To list a study you will need to do the following:
- Fill out the Community Pool new study form. Here you will provide all of the details that will be shown to potential participants on the available studies webpage.
- Send a copy of your REB certificate to [email protected], making sure to include the study title as it will be shown on the list.
If the ISPR team has any questions you will hear from them requesting clarification, otherwise your study will go up on the available studies page within two business days.
Recruiting specific participants through the Community Pool
Any individual enrolling in the ISPR Community Pool will only be required to give their names and email addresses, to make it as easy as possible to sign up. However they will then be asked if they would be willing to respond to a longer prescreening questionnaire that asks about demographic information, life experiences, etc. Those individuals who fill out this longer prescreen could be targeted directly for studies that have specific selection criteria (e.g., women between 40 and 50 with kids). This type of screening and direct recruitment will become more available as the number of individuals in the ISPR Community Pool increases, but may be limited at first. If you would like to recruit in this fashion, contact us at [email protected] to inquire.
Help recruit more participants into our pool
Many researchers recruit participants independently for the various studies that they are conducting, and we would like to enlist as many of these people as possible into the ISPR Community Pool so that they could participate in additional research. We already know that these individuals are willing to participate in research, and many of them would need only to be informed that there are many other studies being conducted by other researchers that they could participate in. By working together, we can multiply all of our recruiting efforts and build the common recruitment pool, which will benefit each and every researcher. If you are recruiting participants independently of the participation pools at the University of Ottawa, please include the recruitment message for the ISPR Community Pool (found below) in your study debriefing. This should have no effect on your ongoing research, and could help us to much more quickly build a large pool of interested individuals to participate in all of our research. If this recruitment text isn’t quite appropriate to your participants, please contact us at [email protected] so that we can work with you to modify it to your recruiting circumstances.
Recruitment message to be shared with your participants:
Are you interested in psychological research? The School of Psychology and the Brain and Mind Institute of the University of Ottawa are looking for members of the community to get involved by participating in ongoing research. Participating in research is a great way to give a bit of your time to advance scientific understanding and knowledge, and you may even learn something about yourself in the process. The studies are often fun or at least interesting, and usually don’t require a large time commitment from you. All research conducted through our system has been vetted by the University of Ottawa’s Research Ethics Board and your confidentiality and privacy will always be protected. If you are interested, come to sign up at our webpage.