Description

The Experiment Management System provides universities with an easy-to-use, web-accessible, regulation-compliant 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!

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%.

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Features

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.

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 online survey studies 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).

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.

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

Pretesting (Mass Testing)

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.

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.

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.

Online Surveys

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.

Support

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. http://researchpool.YOURSCHOOL.edu) so students know they are going to an official website.

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.

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; and the best way to reach us is by email. During the weekend, response times may be slower than during the business week.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

How much does the software cost?

Our pricing is based on usage: the total number of studies students participate in over the course of a year. With the software hosted on our servers, there is an annual fee, which includes everything: hosting of the software on our servers, technical support, and software upgrades.

Our prices include all features of our software, including pretesting and online surveys. There are no additional setup fees or usage fees. We provide pricing and accept payment in U.S. Dollars, Canadian Dollars, British Pounds, Euros, and Australian Dollars.

Can I try a demonstration of the software?

Absolutely! Contact us and we'll have a free, no-obligation 30-day demo for your school set up on our servers in a matter of minutes. That will allow you and your colleagues to try out the software thoroughly and ensure it meets all your needs.

Can I speak to some of your customers?

Absolutely! For privacy reasons, we do not list all our customers, but we are happy to put you in touch with any of our more than 450 customers. Just let us know and we'll put you in touch with schools in a similar situation as yours (similar subject pool size, etc.) so you can speak directly with them. Please make sure to ask them about the quality of customer service they have received from us. We are proud to say we have never lost a customer, and we believe our excellent attention to customer service is one of the reasons.

My budget is quite tight, and I'm not sure how to find the money to pay for your software.

Most schools take the money from their general departmental budget, or from the overhead charged to researchers. Another option is to use the reports in our system that provide information on the usage of the participant pool by study (or researcher or P.I.) and bill out the costs in proportion to the amount of pool hours used by each. Some schools have funded the software through funds set aside for technology that enhances the learning experience for students. We can also offer flexible payment terms to more easily coincide with your fiscal year.

I have a graduate student who has offered to write software like yours for our department. Why should I use your software?

While a big cost in software is the initial development of software, the ongoing maintenance costs (adding new features, updating the software to comply with new regulations) often exceed the initial development cost over time. A number of our customers started out with a home-grown system, then realized the time and effort involved in maintaining such software was too costly compared to using our software. Our software is over 45,000 lines of solid, tested code that is used by numerous universities every day.

Departments that run subject pools are not in the software business, and software development is not their core competency. When it came time to find a software solution for statistical analysis, did your department write their own, or use a commercial product like SPSS?

This software is our only product, and the sole focus of our company. We have the necessary resources to devote to the product, while schools who try to write such software on their own often end up draining shared resources.

Do I need to involve my IT department?

As the software runs on our servers, your IT department will not need to take on any more responsibilities or staff time by adopting our software.

Can you tell me more about your datacenter facilities?

We use only enterprise-grade IBM Netfinity and Dell PowerEdge servers for our customers. All our servers have redundant processors, hard drives, and network connections, to reduce the chance of failure. On a typical day during the school year, our servers process more than 5 million transactions throughout the day. Our servers are located in secure datacenters in Washington, DC and Toronto (Canada), and both datacenters are staffed around the clock. Data is backed up nightly and the backups are stored at the datacenter and also at an off-site location. We operate more than 25 servers in our datacenters.

What is the difference between hosting the software on your servers in Washington, DC compared to Toronto?

Our main datacenter is in Washington, DC, and that is where you site will be located by default. For an additional annual fee, we can locate your site on a server in Toronto. This is a special service offered primarily to universities in Canada, where data privacy rules prohibit them from storing data on US soil (because of the US Patriot Act).

How long will it take to set up my system?

Once we receive your completed setup form by email, we can have your site ready by the next business day.

My IRB is very strict. Does your software meet all the proper regulations?

Definitely. Our software is compliant with all regulations in the US, Canada, and EU. Read our compliance information for more details.

I see your company is located outside the US. Should I be concerned about our data?

Not at all. Your data will reside on our servers which are located in the US and Canada. Our company is incorporated in the European Union, and as a company we are required to comply with EU data privacy regulations, which are stricter than those in the US. On top of that, we provide guarantees in writing of our corporate compliance with US, Canadian, and EU privacy regulations, as part of our services agreement.