SONA for researchers

Only members of the Institute of Psychology at Osnabrück University can have a SONA account for researchers. Group accounts that are used by several people are not permitted for reasons of traceability and to prevent misuse.
Members of the Institute of Cognitive Science can also apply for a researcher account (see below).

If you are a member of the institute, please send an informal e-mail to the SONA administration team at sonapsy@uni-osnabrueck.de to request an account or to have the researcher role added to your existing account.Please include your full name and your UOS email address in this email and let the administrator know if you already have a participant account at SONA. If you create a new account, you will receive an email with your username (user ID) and password for SONA within 2-3 working days. You can use this information to log in to your account.
When creating the account, you should note in the comment field to which chair/department the researcher belongs. For reasons of data protection, the researcher account may only be applied for and linked to an official Osnabrück University e-mail address.

In SONA, there is always a Principal Investigator (PI) in addition to the researchers. There is one P.I. per subject/research area (e.g. one P.I. for the field of A&O psychology). The main task of the P.I. is to check whether the studies published by this field on SONA are still up to date or can be set to "inactive" or deleted. P.I.s therefore do not have to be directly involved in the individual studies, but take on an overarching overview (and, if necessary, clean-up) function for the subject area.
It is a good idea for people to take on this role who have communication options with all researchers in the field so that they can inquire about the status of the studies if necessary.
When creating a study in SONA, it is essential to assign the P.I. of the subject area to it in addition to the researchers.

As before, up to 3 VP hours per experiment can be awarded to psychology students. Since the winter semester 2024/25, VP hours in Psychology have been allocated via the SONA platform. You can enter your study in SONA to allocate VP hours. All information and explanations about the program can be found on this page or in more detail in the PDF document linked above.
If you do not yet have a researcher account for SONA, you can apply for one at  sonapsy@uos.de.

If students carry out a study as part of their Bachelor's or Master's thesis, project work or empirical internship, they are given a temporary researcher account or researcher role for the duration of the study. The account must be linked to a UOS email address. The academic supervisor of the thesis or research group is responsible for the researcher account and must be named as the responsible researcher for the study to be carried out.

If you have a research assistant working for you, they can be given a temporary researcher account or the researcher role for the duration of their work. The account must be linked to a UOS email address. The academic supervisor is responsible for the researcher account and must be named as the responsible researcher for the study to be carried out .

Students/student assistants write an informal email to the SONA administration team at sonapsy@uni-osnabrueck.de to apply for a researcher account or to have the researcher role added to their existing account. This email should include your full name and UOS email address and let the administrator know if you already have a participant account with SONA.
When setting up a new account, you will receive an email with your user name (user ID) and password for SONA within 2-3 working days. Students/student assistants can use this information to log into their account.
When creating the account, it should be noted in the comment field that it is a temporary researcher account (with a note of the chair/department, the responsible academic supervisor and the reason for creating the account, e.g. Bachelor's thesis or Master's thesis), so that it is always clear that it is a temporary researcher account.

By default, VP hours are automatically credited 72 hours after participation. However, you can also allocate them beforehand and edit them even after the 72 hours have expired.

If the study takes significantly longer or shorter than planned for individual participants, it is possible to adjust the remuneration through trial subject hours. It is advisable to document the reason in the comments field so that the deviation in the number of trial participant hours can be reconstructed at a later date.

If the allocation of VP hours is dependent on certain conditions (e.g. the number of completed questionnaires), this can also be implemented in SONA. At the beginning, enter the maximum number of credits in the settings for the duration of the study and the corresponding credits and provide more detailed information in the study description in SONA about what determines the VP hours ultimately awarded or that these may differ. Switch off automatic credit allocation in the advanced settings of the study. You can now assign the VP hours "manually" for each subject by viewing the subjects who have completed the study via "View Your Uncredited Timeslots". There you can adjust the credit amount individually.

Please contact the admin team at  sonapsy@uos.de. The information can only be corrected with admin rights.

Yes, you can do this by setting up a study on SONA, which you leave inactive so that it is not displayed to other people on SONA and they cannot register. Accordingly, when creating your study, you only need to provide information regarding the type of study, the title, the duration and the credits and you must enter a P.I.. You can leave all other details blank. However, make sure that the "Active Study?" checkbox is set to "No".
Once you have created the study, you can create a timeslot under "View/Administer Timeslots". Select a day in the future and then enter your target N under "Number of Participants". This number can also be changed afterwards or you can add a new timeslot if you want to register more participants.
Now click on "Modify" in the overview of your timeslots. Here you can register individuals under "Manual Sign-Up" and several people under "Batch Credit Granting" to credit them. For "Manual Sign-Up", you must then check the "Credit Granted" box for the respective person in your overview. In both cases, you will need the identity code of the participants. You can ask for this beforehand in your study, for example.

If a screening is necessary for your study, you can set this up as a separate study at SONA for advertising and visibility purposes and forward qualified participants from there to your main study via invitation code. You can set the number of credits for the screening to 0 and explain in the information description that it is a screening and that the participants will be forwarded to the main study after they have qualified, where they can then receive their VP hours. Also provide information here about the number of credits for the actual study.

In this case, it seems to make the most sense to work with two booking systems, as participants without a SONA account cannot be noted in the timeslots in SONA. You could then, for example, divide the offered appointments by day or time of day and offer some of them in SONA and some outside.

It is possible to register participants manually. To do this, click on "view studies" and click on the name of the study to go to "View/Adminster Time Slots". If you click on "Modify" in the current list of participants, you can add participants to a timeslot by entering the identity code at the bottom of the manual sign-up.

If a test subject does not show up for a study appointment without prior notification, it must be marked as an "Unexcused No-Show". If the test subject is repeatedly absent without excuse, their account will be temporarily blocked and can be unblocked again by submitting a request to the administration team.

Of course, you may also advertise participation in your study outside of SONA. Please note that the information about the study provided outside SONA should match the study information in SONA.

In terms of data protection, participation in SONA is completely blinded. Each person in SONA receives a permanent subject code. This means that researchers can identify participants in laboratory studies and (multi-) part online studies using their code from SONA (instead of their name or a self-generated VP code).