Introduction

This manual provides most of the information that is generally needed for FSW researchers to start and manage studies on the Leiden SONA platform.

For more advanced information, a full technical manual is available upon request, for this and other questions and suggestions contact the administrator: proefpersonen@fsw.leidenuniv.nl

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Accounts

Account types

SONA distinguishes between three types of roles that can be associated with a user account:

• Participant: used by participating students and external participants.
• Researcher: used by master/bachelor project students conducting research, PhD students and internship researchers. Note that bachelor and master students will also always have a participant role.
• Principal investigator: used by teachers/researchers/professors to have access to all studies conducted by the researchers under their supervision. For these accounts you need to at least have a PhD degree.

Account requests

Researcher and P.I. accounts can be requested by contacting the administrator at proefpersonen@fsw.leidenuniv.nl, include the following in your email:

• Full name:
• E-mail: must be university email
• Student number: of course only if you are a student
• Institute: Psychology or Education and Child studies
• Supervisor: Not needed in case of PI account

Creating the account can take 2-3 work days. The log in details will be sent to you by e-mail. After logging in you can change the automatically generated password that will be supplied in this e-mail.

Logging In

After logging in on the main page: https://ul.sona-systems.com/

• You may need to choose which role you wish to use in this session (if multiple roles are associated with your account).
• To change roles later, simply log out and log back in.
• It might be very helpful to log in as a Participant to see what your study looks like for the potential participants.

Home Screen

The home screen (or landing page) has some very useful information and links to relevant pages on the site. Most of the time you will be interacting with the (1) Top Menu, on the left of the screen you will find (2) quick links to manage your studies an timeslots, including (3) a link that will show you all uncredited timeslots across all your studies, and on the right side your will find (4) useful reminders and announcements.

Top Menu

Creating a Study

After creating the account you can now create and manage studies in SONA. However, before creating your first study, first carefully read the SONA Rules. 

Below we walk through the main steps of creating a study (Video tutorials will also be made available shortly). Note that much information is also provided in SONA itself, so make sure to always read the instruction there.

• Step 1: Choose a study type after having clicked on ‘Add New Study
• Step 2: Provide study information
• Step 3: Manage the study.
• Step 4: Create Timeslots [Optional]
• Stap 5: Activate the study

Step 1. Selecting a study type

Click on "Add New Study" from the top menu. Then select the appropriate study type from the following:

Step 2: Provide the Study Information

Review the settings and choose ‘Save study'.

Step 3. Manage your study

You are now on the study homepage, here you have the possibility to use several options to manage the study such as:

• Change the study information
• Add/administer time slots
• View study details
• Contact participants

For more information on managing your studies see here.

This is the main view to come back later if there is anything you need to change or check up on.

• Carefully check the overview and use Participant Study View to see what your study looks like to visitors of your study homepage. Are all the fields filled in correctly and clearly?

Step 4. Add Timeslots [Optional]

For participants to join your study, timeslots need to be made available.

While it is not strictly necessary to create timeslots at this point (i.e. before your study is activated), we encourage you to try to make some Timeslots now. Since the study has not been activated yet, the Timeslots will not be visible to students, so any mistakes at this point can still be easily corrected.

The instructions for creating and managing Timeslots can be found here.

Step 5. Activate the study

• Once you are certain that the entire setup is correct, you have approval from the Ethics committee, and all previous steps are completed you can now publish your study.
• To make your study visible go to the study information view, then to "Change Study Information" from the Study Menu. Find the field "Active Study?" and select "Yes". Then save the changes. Your study is now live and visible to the participants!
• The administrator checks new studies once a week to check for mistakes or violations of the rule.

Managing a Study

Once a study has been created, your will mainly be managing it (i.e. creating timeslots, checking participant overviews and if needed changing study settings) via My Studies > Study Info > Study Menu.

Closing a Study

• Close the project at the page ‘Change Study Description’ and untick the option ‘Active Study’ This makes the study inactive and therefore invisible to participants.
• Archive important details (timeslots, study configuration). Tip: print to PDF.
• Do not delete the experiment yourself. Studies will be automatically deleted after 3 years of inactivity.

Using Timeslots

Even once a study is approved and active, participants will not be able to join your study until you have created timeslots.

• For lab-based studies, a timeslot equals the duration of one participation on an experiment (this would include setup, debriefing etcetera).
• A timeslot allows multiple participants.
• Timeslots within one experiment are allowed to overlap but not when they are in the same location (room)
• Through timeslots, researchers can grant credits to the participants

Adding timeslots

To add timeslots either go to the study info page > Study Menu > ‘View/Administer Time Slots’ or from the My Studies tab, go to the timeslots of the relevant study.

Here you have two options to add timeslots

• Add A Timeslot
• Add Multiple Timeslots (only available for lab-based studies, not for online studies)

Through add multiple timeslots you can easily add timeslots for a full day, once you have filled one week with timeslots you can also copy this week under ‘Copy Timeslots from a Specific Week’.

• If you have troubles with choosing the location, you can choose ‘FSW’ as the location. Additionally, mention explicitly in the study information where the experiment will take place.

Deleting timeslots

To delete timeslots go to ‘View/Administer Time Slots’ and click ‘Modify’ under the timeslot you want to delete.

Timeslots for online experiments

• Generally, you create one timeslot with a number of positions equal to (or slightly larger than) the intended sample size.
• As final participation date / time, use the deadline before which all participants should have started your online task.
• We strongly urge you not to close/remove the timeslot before the specified end-date, even if you have already collected enough participants. Participants who have signed-up for you study and have not completed it yet may be counting on completing the study and receiving the credits before the deadline. If you must close your timeslot early, at least send a bulk email to all the participants informing them of the upcoming closing.

Sign-Ups

All of the following options can be found under Study Menu > View/Administer Timeslots > Modify

• Sign up a participant yourself. On the timeslot page scroll down to Manual Sign-Up. You can sign up a participant by student number or name. By using student number use the number without the s in front of it.
• Cancel sign-up. Under all Sign-Ups, all participants in this timeslot are shown. Under the name you can choose for the option ‘cancel’. It is only possible to cancel participation if the status of the participant is ‘no action taken’.
• No-show. If a participant does not show up for a study, please choose the reason excused or unexcused. When choosing unexcused a penalty equal to the amount of credits to earn will be deducted from the participant’s total amount of credits. Please note that there are clear rules for what counts as excused or unexcused.
• Grant credits. You can also select the number of credits to grant here. For instance, if a session ran longer then expected, you could choose to award more credits, or if a participants

After an option, scroll down on the page to choose ‘Update Sign-Ups’ to save the changes.

Credits and Money

After a participant has completed your study, you should register their participation to grant credits, but also in the case of monetary compensation.

You can do so from the Timeslot view or from the Homepage view.

From Timeslots

To do so: go to the Study menu > ‘View/Administer Timeslots’ > Click modify for the timeslot where you want to grant credits

From Homepage

From the homepage you can also reach an overview of all uncredited sign-ups / timeslots. From this overview you can also grant credits or mark participants as no-shows.

F.A.Q.

For frequently asked question and answers, please see the F.A.Q section on SONA itself.