Studies must be approved by the University’s Institutional Research Board (IRB). The behavioral research program director serves as Mendoza IRB Liaison to assist researchers through the IRB application and approval processes, thus providing an in-house resource for all Mendoza faculty.
Studies in the lab are assigned to 30-minute or 60-minute time slots regardless of the specific anticipated length of the study. Researchers should contact the program director if studies are anticipated to run longer or shorter than 30 minutes per participant.
Requests for lab usage must be submitted at least 5 business days prior to the beginning of data collection.
Common compensation for research participation for student participants is 1 SONA point for approximately 30 minutes. SONA is the third-party software provider used by Notre Dame for student participants, but the SONA system is not connected to any of the University’s systems including student accounts, class information, or Sakai. Students or outside participants may be compensated by other means (cash, items, etc.) as designated by the researcher in conjunction with the program director.
The MBL is as easy to use for instructors as it is for researchers. Instructors merely assign their students to participate in the MBL and, at the end of the semester, each instructor receives a specialized report detailing the participation credits of each of the class’s students. Instructors determine the value of each SONA point for their class grading. Please see the tab For Instructors for details.
Lab participation of 2 SONA credits per semester is a requirement for each Principles of Management and Principles of Marketing class. Instructors in these classes are provided with text to include in their syllabi and are encouraged to invite the program director to give a brief presentation on the MBL at the beginning of each semester.
Many other instructors offer participation in the MBL to give their students the unique experience of learning more about research processes in a world class university business behavioral laboratory. Most of these instructors have offered extra credit in class as an incentive for participation. In the spirit of reciprocity, researchers collecting data are asked to consider offering credit for courses as appropriate. See the tab For Instructors for details.
