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"Our experience was great. We received more than enough participants for our surveys and each of them gave us valuable input on improving our site. I'd like to say thanks to all the participants and especially to the ResearchChicago team."
- Murdoch Fraser, Dizpersion Technologies Inc
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Frequently Asked Questions
General
Studies
Security
Confidentiality
Subject Recruitment
Subject Reimbursement
HIPAA Information
IRB Information
General
Who is ResearchChicago?
ResearchChicago is a company dedicated to connecting human participants looking to get involved in experiments and studies with researchers looking to staff and schedule their research studies. We are committed to providing an extremely high level of service to ease and expedite all of your recruiting and scheduling needs. Best of all, this revolutionary service saves you time, money, and effort, allowing you to concentrate on your experiment/study rather than worry about obtaining research subjects.
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What can ResearchChicago do for me?
ResearchChicago can take care of your entire experimental subject recruiting needs. ResearchChicago has assembled a large database of university students and non-students of different ages and backgrounds from different locations and with different interests. All are looking to participate in research studies. We connect you with them quickly and help you find the right subjects. Soon we will even schedule them for your experiments through a user-friendly interface.
Depending on your specific experiment needs, ResearchChicago can:
- advertise your experiment on our site and/or send it out to qualifying interested participants via email
- help you quickly and easily create a scheduling webpage to which interested participants would go to sign up and find out more information about your experiment, and
- a variety of other options and features is available to fit your specific needs
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If we have a lot of experiments, can ResearchChicago manage it?
Of course. Our web servers are state of the art and are protected by the highest security standards. They have been tested over and over again and can handle a great amount of Internet traffic daily. All of the data is backed up daily, and each study is personally reviewed by one of our administrators for completeness and compliance with standards. Large or small, we will handle all of your research recruitment needs!
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When is the website available for use?
We are operational 24 hours per day, 7 days a week 365 days a year. Your experiments/studies will be posted in a matter of hours and you can have access to your scheduling site whenever you want. You always have complete control over your postings.
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Do you provide support?
We stand behind our service and will help you with whatever problems you may have. Our customer service is available by phone or email for immediate help for any questions. There is also detailed directions and help documentation on the site to direct experimenters, departmental administrators, and participants to the use of the site.
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How does this work?
In short: We connect researchers with participants for any variety of experiments/studies/research projects that may be going.
- Researchers post their study advertisement on the website, with any kind of specific requirements that they may have. Here researchers can choose a wide variety of options, such as how their post will look, what kind of participants they would like, how they'd like the participants to hear about the information, etc.
- Participants are notified of the experiment and are invited to browse the study.
- Depending on the preferred mode of contact (phone, email, confidential communication through the website) the participant is then connected to the researcher.
- Researcher conducts his/her experiment just like they normally do.
We are here to streamline your recruiting process. Instead of advertising to thousands of uninterested people on the radio, train, tv, and sidewalks, you can contact the people in your recruitment area that are interested in participating in studies and experiments.
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What do I get with ResearchChicago over traditional methods of posting?
Simply by posting on our site you can:
- Advertise to those people in your selected recruitment area that are interested and in participating in studies and experiments.
- Stop using people from lecture classes who are forced to do your experiments because their grade depends on it. One of the biggest criticisms of human based research is that the people used as participants only do it because they have to, and the data acquired as a result is not too good or valid. Usually these people will go through the experiment as fast as possible, give false data, and try to do the least work for the most time. Our participants want to participate in research.
- Save yourself and your graduate students hours of posting on the sidewalks, bulletin boards, and community posts. We've brought the viewers of your posts online.
- Instead of waiting months and years to find out if there are enough participants out there interested in your experiment, get instant feedback from thousands of participants.
- Because so many more people than ever before will be viewing your study and wanting to participate in it, your honorariums or stipends can be lower (to comply with HIPAA's mandate of non-coerciveness) or you can use alternate means of reimbursement.
- No more cancelling experiments because noone wants to participate.
- If your study is purely a volunteer one and you're worried that no one will show up, ResearchChicago has an internal point system which rewards our participants for participating, so that you don't have to.
- Many other benefits, check us out for yourself
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What kind of results can I expect?
For every experiment the results will of course vary. However, our interested participant database is very large and there is thus a very good chance that many people will be interested in your study.
As an example: we had a researcher who was late in his recruiting and had about two days to recruit 32 participants for his study. When he posted with us, he got 53 participants in less than 12 hours and was able to complete his study ahead of schedule.
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Studies
What kind of studies can I post?
ResearchChicago will accept almost any study. Researchers have advertised a variety of studies, such as: drug testing studies that take years to finish, sleep disorder studies in sleep labs that take months to complete, psychological research studies that take an hour, and surveys that take minutes.
The interested participants that will view your posting are generally 16-80 years of age. Additionally, some participants may have children and infants that they are looking to enroll in studies. Your study can be advertised to a wide range of people drawn from many socio-economic and ethnic backgrounds.
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What if my study needs participants over a long period of time?
For each study, dates can be set to denote when participant collection begins and ends. Even if your study has a year or more to collect participants, your study will remain in our listings for as long as you specify.
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Can you help Market Researchers?
Absolutely, we help all researchers by providing a connection to interested participants in Chicagoland. These people are looking to help with the progress of science, try new products, give their opinions, etc. They are eager to participate in many studies.
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Security
How is my study information secured?
ResearchChicago uses SSL encryption (the same technology used for credit card transactions) any time sensitive information is being transmitted. Encryption is used during the sign up process and whenever researchers and participants are logged in. To verify this, check for the yellow lock icon (or other security indicator) in your browser.
The servers that host ResearchChicago are configured with tight restrictions to prevent any information leaks. Backups are performed nightly to guard against the unlikely event of system failure.
We understand that security is of utmost importance. Please contact us if you have any security concerns.
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Confidentiality
How does confidentiality work?
ResearchChicago respects the right to confidentiality of participants. We do not under any circumstances release any identifying information about participants to researchers. We may release some demographic information (gender, location, age, etc) to aid in eligibility requirements, but names and email addresses are always withheld.
Since some studies require that participants remain anonymous, we can set up anonymous email communication channels between researchers and participants. Researchers and participants can communicate back and forth anonymously.
If extra confidentiality measures are required, we can address issues on a case-by-case basis and make custom changes to suit researchers' needs.
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Subject Recruitment
Our faculty already have their own system for recruitment, can we still use ResearchChicago?
Yes. No matter what your experiment subject recruitment needs, ResearchChicago can help. Most researchers have already developed their own techniques of recruitment, but generally we've found that these methods are inefficient, time-consuming, and costly by comparison. Instead of postering campuses, placing ads in newspapers or on the radio, and wasting your research assistants' time and effort, post for free on ResearchChicago and watch how much more efficient recruitment can be. You can even keep doing your old recruitment techniques if you so choose while advertising with ResearchChicago.
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How does ResearchChicago recruit participants?
We recruit interested participants through a number of ways, including standard advertising, postering campuses, word of mouth, community-based advertisements, and recruiting directly at a university.
The people that choose to be participants in our service are eagerly looking to be part of experiments and studies on campus, and select whether to participate in each experiment based on their own preferences. When they sign up for our service they know that they want to help the University research community, and when they are informed of the specific experiment they decide whether to participate based on their own preferences (money, time, location, etc).
ResearchChicago gives you access to all of these interested parties by letting you advertise to them directly.
Our recruitment practices are fully compliant with HIPAA.
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Subject Reimbursement
What if we don't pay our subjects? What kind of reimbursement is allowed?
How you reimburse your participants is your choice. We do not require that you pay your participants or give them some other kind of reimbursement. Researchers can choose to compensate the participants in any way they see fit. Study compensations have included money, a chance to win a drawing or a raffle, free medication (for medical drug studies), free education, food and refreshments during the study, and of course nothing at all. When you post your study you will have a chance to specify exactly what kind of reimbursement you are providing (if any) to your subjects.
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Can ResearchChicago handle paying our participants?
ResearchChicago currently does not handle monetary participant reimbursement as we are currently unable to accurately determine which participants took part in each study. We may offer this service in the future in combination with other services.
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HIPAA Information
Does ResearchChicago comply with HIPAA?
The Privacy Rule of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) sets standards to protect and guard against the misuse of individually identifiable health information. Many corporations, university departments, and others don.t acquire private health information while conducting research studies and experiments.
Only you can determine if your particular research study or experiment is subjected to HIPAA regulations (This has very little to do with us). If you do not acquire such private information then HIPAA regulations may not apply to your research activities or to the activities that ResearchChicago helps you to schedule and advertise.
If it is determined that your experiment falls under HIPAA rules and it is determined that your use of ResearchChicago to be covered by the HIPAA rules, ResearchChicago is totally compliant with HIPAA guidelines. Our site is 100% secure, 128-bit SSL encrypted (the industry security protocol), and does not sell or distribute any information to third parties. ResearchChicago employees are also certified by the National Institute of Health (NIH) as having completed its Human Participants Protection Education program.
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IRB Information
Do I have to reapply for IRB approval?
ResearchChicago is fully compliant with HIPAA regulations and security standards (see above) and maintains better then required security and information protocols. The choice of whether to reapply for IRB approval is up to individual researchers. If you already have an IRB approval number, you can just post it with your study. However, if you are not comfortable with submitting before gaining explicit approval, you are encouraged to reapply or submit a revision to your IRB.
Generally, IRBs that review our service have decided that ResearchChicago is exempt from their review (meaning researchers do not have to worry about it). However, you know your school's IRB requirements best and the choice to reapply is fully up to you. If you need additional information, we can provide it to you.
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