Business Sona System in the College of Business Administration at CPP(version 1 April 2016)

Prepared byDr. Jae Min Jung and Dr. Randy Stein

Overview:

The Sona System, used by the College of Business AdministrationBehavioral Business Research Lab (CBA BBRL) is a research participation sign-up and scheduling program. Although students from any CBA class can participate, it has been customary that students takingIBM301 (Principles of Marketing Management), a core class for all CBA students, are normally asked to participate in research conducted by faculty and students in return for course credits or extra credits depending on each instructor’s own policy. To make research participation non-coercive, students who cannot or donot wish to participate in the research are allowed to do an alternative task that would take about the same amount of time and efforts as the research in hand (e.g., a reaction paper to a Wall Street Journal paper).The SonaSystem is a primarily appointment management system and is used routinely in psychology departments and business schools across the country. Hence, when participants sign up and participate in the studies, their names are separate from their research data, thus remaining anonymous. Researchers cannot know how individual respondents participated on their studies. Even when students opted for an alternative task, neither the researchers nor the instructors know how students got credits as all logistical issues are handled by the CBA BBRL Administrator (i.e., currently Allen Lu), who has been trained to handle logistical issues. When a researcher wants to use Sona System to recruit participants, the researcher works with the BBRL administrator, who then lists the study on Sona Systems in anticipation of the IRB approval. When the study is approved by IRB, the BBRL administrator asks the CBA BBRL director (i.e., Dr. Jae Min Jung), who has an administrative access to the system,for an approval of use of subject pool. Upon the approval of the BBRL director, the study is then released to all eligible participating students. All the students who participate for the studies are given the credits designated for the studies (.5 Sona credits are granted for every 30 minutes of time involved in research; 0.5 for up to 30 minutes, 1.0 for up to 60 minutes, and so on) regardless of the completeness of their participation.At the end of the quarter (Friday of week 10), the BBRL administrator prepares a student participation report and give it to each instructor.

FAQs:

Who is able to use the Sona System?

  • The Sona System may be used by faculty and students (graduate or undergraduate) under the supervision of faculty conducting research in the CBA.
  • A detailed set of instructions for researchers is available upon request.
  • A detailed set of instructions forinstructors is available upon request, but instructors rarely need to know the details as all the administrative jobs are performed by BBRL.

What can a researcher do in Sona?

  • Researchers can have participants sign-up for times to participate in traditional (face-to-face) data collection
  • Using the Sona System, the BBRL administrator presents an IRB-approved informed consent form within Sona System and have students sign up for appointments to complete experimentsif they agree to participate. An alternative task option is also presented at this point.
  • The BBRL administrator administers the study in the lab and grants studentsparticipation credit in Sona Systems. Researchers may take a more active role in the lab depending on the study and their desire for quality control. It is all up to researchers. The role of BBRL administrator is to help facilitate research.
  • Researchers can have participants complete on-line studieshosted on other web sites such as Qualtrics.com.
  • Participants read an IRB-approved informed consent form in Sona and sign up for an online study.
  • Can be set to be confidential (with participant data collected) or anonymous (no IP address or other participant info collected)
  • Can also have Sona Systems point users to a different website (e.g., Qualtrics) to complete surveys. The BBRL administrator can connect Qualtrics to Sona Systems in order to award participation credits to the students automatically without having to collect students’ personal information, making data collection anonymous. If researchers use other survey tools, it is up to the researchers to ensure collecting participation information and give back to the administrator, who then will enter credits on Sona on behalf of the researchers.

Who are the participants recruited from Sona?

  • Participants recruited through Sona will be undergraduates taking the College of Business Administration classes. Participants are usually recruited from IBM301 classes for a few reasons. First studies involving human subjects are more popular among marketing than other business disciplines, so faculty cooperation is higher in marketing. Second, IBM301 has a relatively large enrollment (over 500 students) making it an ideal course for subject pool. When there are not enough IBM301 classes available, CBA BBRL would seek out other marketing classes or business classes for recruitment. Third, focusing on IBM301, we can avoid complications associated with same students’ enrollment in multiple classes. The educational rationale for this is that serving as a participant gives researchers-in-training first-hand knowledge of what is involved in business research. Further,according to a multi-year data collected from research participants in BBRL, it is clear that students learn marketing and business concepts by simply participating in the studies available in Sona-systems, providing evidence for the effectiveness of the research participation for students’ education.

What happens when a student wants extra credit points, but does not want to participate in research?

  • Researchers should make it clear that an alternative task is available tothe students who do not wish to participate in a study listed in Sona Systems.These alternative assignments are NOT handled by the individual researchers but rather through the administration of the Sona System. Individual researchers using Sona have no contact with students who elect to do alternative assignments. This point is also made known outside Sona-systems at the BBRL Business Research Panel site: Click here.

V 1- April 2016