Experiment Management System software

In general, we have support staff ready to answer your support email at most times of the day or night during the business week. Our staff works a mix of US, Eastern & Western European, and Hong Kong hours; an

After your site is set up on our servers, support is provided through a toll-free phone number and by email. We include a feature within the software for an administrator to request support with the simple click of a button.

When you sign up as a customer, we work with you to determine exactly how to configure the software based on your rules and requirements. Everything is highly configurable, from the number of credits a student must complete to the enabling and disabling of a number of features. We also customize it with your institution's logo, and we can work with your technical staff to provide a custom URL (e.g. .YOURSCHOOL.edu) so students know they are going to an official website.

The system includes an extensive online survey feature at no extra charge. This allows researchers to easily set up an online survey study, which students can complete online and immediately receive credit for participation. There is also support for doing an electronic debriefing as soon as the student finishes the survey.

Researchers may restrict participation in their studies to students who meet certain requirements based on their responses to the system-wide pretest. Even better, students are unaware of this restriction -- the system will not show a study to a student if they do not qualify for it. Restrictions can even be based on a student's mean score across a set of unidimensional scales, which is useful when running a standardized assessment such as a depression battery. Researchers can analyze the response data across all students, and view an individual student's pretest responses if the student has signed up for the researcher's study. Anonymous, system-assigned ID codes can be enabled, so a student is only identified to researchers by a unique numeric ID code, to protect their privacy. Researchers may also use the system to contact students who meet a specified set of criteria, to invite them to participate in their study. Such contact is done in a manner that hides the students' identity from the researcher.

Administrators can set up an online pretest, which students must complete before they use the system. This pretest can ask basic questions (e.g. "Do you wear glasses?") and more complex questions, including questions with likert and unidimensional scales.

How many times has an study been delayed or even canceled after the students participating really weren't suitable participants? With the online pretesting feature, potential participants are screened based on their pretest responses and the system automatically ensures only qualified students can view and sign up for studies with participation restrictions. If a study requires that participants be male, wear glasses, and have at least a 3.2 on a likert scale measuring their attitude towards eating disorders, the system can enforce it -- without revealing to the participant that such restrictions were placed on the study.

The Experiment Management System software runs on servers maintained by Sona Systems at datacenters in Washington, DC and Toronto (Canada).

The system makes an extensive array of reports available to the administrator. The administrator can monitor overall usage of the system (number of open timeslots, number of credits granted, etc.), and generate specific reports on no-show rates, pretest completion rates, and usage of the pool by researchers. All data may be downloaded at any time in CSV (comma-separated) format so it can be imported into another program (like Excel) for further analysis.

The administrator can log on at any time and run a variety of reports on which students have fulfilled or failed to fulfill their credit requirements. The administrator may also add students into the system at the beginning of the semester (a bulk import utility is provided) or allow students to create their own accounts, which the administrator then approves for login. The administrator may also set up special instructor accounts so an instructor can easily view credit information for students in all their courses.

The system contains a lab scheduling feature so researchers can view the schedule of availability for labs and set up their studies appropriately. The system can automatically prevent double-booking of a lab.

Researchers can set up their studies online, set up the available times for the study, and view which students have signed up. Researchers may set up studies that require a special sign-up password, and they may also set up to be administered by the system. They can define pre-requisite or disqualifier studies for any of their studies, and may set up 2-part studies where the two sessions must be scheduled a specified number of days apart. They may also specify that only students in specific classes are eligible to sign up (this is useful when recruiting naive participants).

Students can easily log on to the system, and view all available studies and the times they may participate in those studies. They can sign up for their desired study with the click of a button, and cancel their appointment up until a specified cancellation deadline. Students are prevented from signing up for a study for which they do not qualify, due to participation restrictions or other reasons. At any time, they can view the number of requirements they need to fulfill, and their progress so far. The system can automatically send email reminders to students and researchers with information about their upcoming appointments.

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Schools that switch to our software from a paper-based "system" typically see overall participation rates increase by 25-50%, and no-show rates that drop to below 5%.

The Experiment Management System provides universities with an easy-to-use, web-accessible, interface to handle all the scheduling and management of studies. Students can sign up for studies online, researchers can set up their studies online, and administrators can ensure students have completed all their requirements. This is all done from a simple, quick interface that can be accessed from any web browser, and is available 24 hours a day. Say good-bye to cluttered bulletin boards and sign-up sheets!

The Experiment Management System provides universities with an easy-to-use, web-accessible, interface to handle all