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I'm not sure whether this is a rant, or informing or both. Let me know if it's a bit too much on the ranting side, I'll edit it. > Wait, does participating in
by mettamage 8y ago
I'm not sure whether this is a rant, or informing or both. Let me know if it's a bit too much on the ranting side, I'll edit it.
> Wait, does participating in a study as a subject count for credit, or does working on a study count?
There was this course called "measurements and diagnostics" and for that you had to pass the theory/tutorials of the course and also 10 hours of being a participant in research. If you didn't do the 10 hours of participation, you could do them at any moment you want and if you completed it, you immediately passed the course.
My university has about 400 psychology students, so that is 4000 hours worth of people participating per year. And I'm pretty sure that more universities are doing this. In The Netherlands alone I estimate there to be about 40000 psychology students per year and probably about 5 hours of compulsory 'participation' in experimental studies. So a tiny country like The Netherlands is skewing this particular bias about 20000 participant hours per year.
Participating in experimental studies is quite fun (pro tip: go for the fMRI and EEG studies ASAP! ;-) ), but I didn't appreciate how I was forced to do it. I didn't learn too much from those experiments and I felt used. It furthermore is a way to be lazy regarding participant recruitment. I'm pretty sure that some startup could disrupt this particular problem. If you have ideas about it, email me, I'm willing to brainstorm and help you to look for ways to solve this problem.
> Aren't studies explicit about the demographics of their participants? And don't studies that make generalized claims usually control for things like gender and age?
Studies are explicit about the demographics, which is why the WEIRD article could be written. And yes they do control for things like gender and age and in general they are quite careful making those claims. The issue is though as a research field psychology isn't the study of the human mind and human behavior but of WEIRD people their mind and WEIRD people their behavior.
Like a lot of societal issues that are in popular media today, this is a systemic issue. Though I could imagine psychology researchers being like: "Hmm, I could get a representative group or I could just get some psychology students and churn my next paper out twice as fast!"
- jackvalentine 8y agoWould it be fair to say that by being forced to participate in a study you aren’t really giving your consent? Even though I presume you get to find/pick the studies you participate in.
- saagarjha 8y agoGenerally, there are "alternative" assignments that you can do instead, but they're usually somewhat more annoying.
- mettamage 8y agoIn my case, we had no alternative. If you chose to study psychology at my uni, you had to do this.
- iguy 8y agoWas there some choice of what studies? So that if you object to a particular one you could decline... if you object to all of them then I guess you should study something else.
- ACow_Adonis 8y agoIts not just fair, i'd say its accurate. Here's another interesting phenomenon: a certain personality type (of which I may or may not count my self among) will deliberately supply false data which attempts to invalidate what we perceive as your study goal when forced to participate against our wills in this way. Its a small rebellion against an academic system that doesn't respect us or intellectual integrity, but is focused on pumping out shoddy research on unwilling participants. Turn academics into a game and thats how it'll be treated.
- dwringer 8y agoI remember this practice of almost-compelled research participation even in the introductory undergraduate Psychology 101 course, and in that class (which included high school students and tons of non-majors) there was a lot of the attitude you describe.
- dublo7 8y agoThat seems unfair and wrong. I'm forced to have a job to pay my bills and I get to pick my job but that doesn't exactly mean it's without my consent. I also have the choice of not working or wiring some other job. I would say it's a responsibility not supporting forced on people against their will. Two very different things.
- saagarjha 8y ago> Participating in experimental studies is quite fun (pro tip: go for the fMRI and EEG studies ASAP! ;-) ), but I didn't appreciate how I was forced to do it. I didn't learn too much from those experiments and I felt used. It furthermore is a way to be lazy regarding participant recruitment. I'm pretty sure that some startup could disrupt this particular problem. I don't see much ability to innovate here other than Mechanical Turking out the work to people you pay to participate, but if you come up with something interesting I'd love to hear it…
- dagw 8y agoother than Mechanical Turking out the work to people you pay to participate You'd be surprised how common that is.
- kaybe 8y agoIt's actually a decent source of money as a student. Go lie in the fMRT for an hour or two (I just sleep if there's nothing to do) and they will wire you ~10€/hour or more.
- ACow_Adonis 8y agoExact same thing going on in the courses over here in Aus.
- simple_phrases 8y agoThanks for taking the time to answer my questions as well as you did.