SONA

This user guide explains the ways in which researchers (faculty and graduate students) can use the SONA system account to recruit students to take part in their IRB-approved research projects. It also explain how instructors can promote research participation by offering required/extra credits in their class.

CJC SONA systems link: https://ufl-cjc.sona-systems.com

SONA admin email: uf-cjc-sonasystems@jou.ufl.edu

1. What is the SONA system?

The SONA system is an online research management software used by departments around the world. It helps researchers recruit and manage studies, help instructors manage extra credits, and help students find studies to participate in for course points.

The system makes the process of tracking research participation easier. It enables researchers to specify the recruitment criteria and number of participants for their study. It frees instructors from keeping track of individual study participations, and it gives students more opportunities to participate in studies and allocate their credits.

2. Who can use the SONA system?

Any instructors, researchers, and students in the College of Journalism and Communications.

3. Do I have to use SONA system?

As an instructor, you are encouraged. Instructors can make the decision if they want to awards students for participation in different research activities. Instructors can specify the maximum number of credits required or offered study participation as extra credits to their students [see “For Instructors” section below].

As a researcher, yes, if you seek to recruit student participants from CJC, you must go through SONA. Please see the section below for instructions.

For Researchers

1. What are the eligibility criteria for using the SONA system?

You must be a faculty member or a graduate student performing research under the supervision of a faculty member in the College of Journalism and Communications.
You must have IRB approval prior to recruiting participants. Applications without IRB approval will not be considered.
You must provide a justification for your sample size, which justifies the need for research time slots.

2. How many participants can I recruit?

Researchers may recruit as many participants as needed to satisfy the conditions of your study design (approved by IRB). However, to ensure that researchers don’t oversample and the even distribution of available participants among researchers, each researcher must provide a clear justification for your sample size. Researchers may rely on a priori power analysis, accepted rules of thumb, or any other criteria the researcher sees fitting. Due to the potential of no-shows and outliers, researchers are advised to oversample by 15%-20%. Again, the number of participants must be approved by IRB.

3. As a researcher, how do I recruit participants using SONA for my study?

In order to recruit participants, you need to follow these steps:

Acquire IRB approval for your study (http://irb.ufl.edu/). Studies that do not have IRB approval will not be considered.
For the first time you set up a study: Email the following information to the SONA admin email uf-cjc-sonasystems@jou.ufl.edu
1. Name of researchers.
2. (Name of faculty supervisor if you are a student).
3. Type of study (e.g., lab experiment, online experiment, survey, focus group, etc.)
4. Project title.
5. IRB approval (approval letter, screenshot from IRB status page, or other documents that indicates the study has been approved).
6. Participant number with a short justification.
7. Estimated time for a student to complete your study.
8. Study start and end date.
9. [if it’s an online survey] your survey url
[IMPORTANT] Only SONA admins can create researcher/instructor accounts. This is to prevent students from giving themselves credit. So if you don’t have a researcher account, let us know and we will create one for you.
For the first time. Wait for SONA admin to list your study on SONA (give the admins up to 48 hours to respond). SONA administrators will send you an email with your SONA researcher ID.
Log into CJC SONA with your ID and temporary password to set up your study.
See this tutorial video for how to set up your study on SONA: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ec8S3xfO-a8
During your study, make sure to log in to SONA and keep track of your study. Remember to grant credits to students who have completed your study. If your study is an online survey, you can set up SONA to automatically grant credits when students reach the end of your Qualtrics survey.

See this link for detailed instructions: https://www.sona-systems.com/help/qualtrics.aspx

4. What is a “time slot?”

A time slot refers to the window of scheduling in the SONA system. Any type of research, whether carried out online or offline, is scheduled through time slots on SONA. For example, let’s say a researcher can run 20 participants at a time on February 26. The researcher then creates several time slots on that day with 20 participants each. The participants can select a time to participate, and the system will send them automatic reminders. In the case of online surveys, a time slot refers to the number of TOTAL participants needed for a study. Set one big timeslot for the last day of your data collection with the total number of participants needed.

5. How are participants awarded credit for participation?

Upon completion of a study, the researcher grants research credit to participants (or the system does it for you if you have auto-credits set up. See: https://www.sona-systems.com/help/qualtrics.aspx)

Research credit is relative to the amount of time a study takes. For example, one hour of research participation is equivalent to one research credit. Similarly, any derivatives of this ratio apply. Following are some examples:

<15 minutes = .25 credit
30 minutes = .50 credit
45 minutes = .75 credit
60 minutes = 1 credit
75 minutes = 1.25 credits
90 minutes = 1.50 credits
105 minutes = 1.75 credits
120 minutes = 2 credits

On-site studies such as lab experiments or focus groups are given .25 credits in addition to the ration above to compensate for the students’ time traveling to the study site. For example, a lab experiment that takes 60 minutes = 1.25 credits.

NOTE: the standardized SONA credits are percentage of the grades. 0.25 credits=0.25% of the total grades, not point systems in your course. For example, for a class with a total of 400 points, 0.25 credits = 400 x 0.25%, which is 1 point. For a class with a total of 800 points, 0.25 credits = 2 points in the class (i.e., 800 x 0.25%). The instructors will need to determine the maximum number of “credits” they are willing to offer as required or extra credits and explain to your students how much the credits are worth in your course point system.

Granting credits through SONA

There are two ways to grant credits through SONA. Manually or automatically.

If you choose to grant credits manually, you must collect the participants’ names in your survey, make sure IRB has approved this before you do.

If you choose to grant credits automatically, follow these instructions: https://www.sona-systems.com/help/qualtrics.aspx (Pay attention and follow every step).

To test if your automatic credit is set up correctly, follow the steps in this link: https://www.sona-systems.com/help/integration_test.aspx

For Instructors

1. What is the difference between optional research participation and required research participation?

Some instructors require students to participate in research as part of their coursework. This means that students cannot earn 100% of their course points if they do not do the required amount of research participation.

Other instructors allow students to earn optional or “extra credit” points in their courses. This means students can earn more than 100% in their course. Extra credit points allow students to bump up their grades in a course but will not penalize them if they do not complete the optional research participation.

2. What do I need to do?

At the beginning of the semester, think about how many credits (required or optional) you are willing to offer to your students for participation. You can use the following template in your syllabi for your students to read:

[Number of] extra credits will be offered for research participation through CJC’s SONA research management system (https://ufl-cjc.sona-systems.com). Please register a SONA account and choose studies to participate in to receive extra credits for this class. Check SONA regularly to see what studies have become available. Typically, it is not until around maybe the third week of the semester that studies will become available. You should NOT wait until the last minute to sign up for participation because people tend to procrastinate and research opportunities will be limited by the end of the semester. In fact, it is probably wise to participate early in the semester when your course loads are the lightest. Please see this video below for how to set up your SONA account: https://youtu.be/_1OnT2ZU6QQ If you have any questions, please contact the CJC SONA administrator through this email: uf-cjc-sonasystems@jou.ufl.edu

You should have received an email from the SONA admins including your SONA instructor ID. Log in with your temporary password and make sure that the courses are entered correctly. [If you don’t know your account, email us: uf-cjc-sonasystems@jou.ufl.edu
Do “mostly” nothing mid semester. Remind your students to check SONA regularly as new studies are posted throughout the semester
At the end of the semester, log in to SONA and export the number of extra credits that students have allocated to your class through study participation. The column you should look at is “credits allocated to your class”. Add that to your grades, and you’re good to go. No more hassling between multiple spreadsheets and saying no to that wonderful graduate student who is begging you to recruit from your class at the end of the semester.