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Lazaridis School Research Participation System
The Lazaridis School Research Participation System (LSRPS) presents an opportunity for you to earn course credit toward your grade by participating in business research studies. The program was developed for two reasons:
- Professors and graduate students conduct studies to advance research in their respective fields, and they rely on students to participate in these studies. The LSRPS allows for sound and reliable data to be collected from students.
- The LSRPS allows students to experience what it’s like to be a participant in research studies, learn about the research process, and at the same time, students can earn some marks towards eligible courses.
Check your course syllabus to find out if you can receive bonus credit for participation in a LSRPS research study. For each eligible course that you are enrolled in, you will be able to earn up to three bonus credits towards your final grade.
Note that the deadline to participate in LSRPS studies and to hand in alternative assignments is the last official day of class for the term at 12:00 PM (Noon).
There are two types of studies, lab and online studies, and the amount of credit assigned corresponds to the type of study.
- Lab studies: These studies are conducted in a laboratory, and therefore require that participants come to campus to participate. You will earn 0.5 credits for every half hour of participation in a lab study.
- Online studies: Participants can complete these studies without coming to campus. You will earn 0.25 credits for every half hour of participation in an online study.
You can earn a maximum of three credits for each eligible course you are enrolled in. That is, if you are enrolled in two courses that are eligible for bonus credit, you can allocate three of your earned credits to the first course and three of your earned credits to the second course. To find out if your courses are eligible for bonus credit, check your syllabus for details about participating in studies through the LSRPS. Keep in mind that you need to assign all earned credit to their respective courses prior to the deadline outlined in your course syllabus. You will be unable to reassign credit after the deadline.
Students must request that an account is made for them every September.
To request that an account is made for you, visit the LSRPS website and select “Request Account." You will be prompted to enter your information, then you will receive an email with your login information.
When requesting that an account is made for you, you must enter your @mylaurier.ca email address.
- Go to the LSRPS website.
- Enter your user ID and password. Your user ID is the stem portion of your @mylaurier.ca email address (e.g. if your email address is doex0000@mylaurier.ca, your user ID would be doex0000). When signing into the LSRPS for the first time in an academic year, you will need to use the randomly generated password that was sent to you after you requested an account. After signing in for the first time, you will then be able to change your password.
- Click on the "Studies" tab to view the list of studies for which you are eligible and to find details about available timeslots.
- Read the study description of available studies and if a study interests you, sign up for one of the available time slots.
- Use the “My schedule and Credits” tab to look at the list of studies that you are signed up for, cancel your sign-up, reassign credits and check the status of any pending credits.
When logging into the LSRPS for the first time, you will have to complete a prescreen questionnaire. Your responses to these questions are used to determine study eligibility and completion of this short questionnaire should not take longer than 15 minutes.
The Mass Testing study is available to participants throughout the academic year and consists of various questionnaires. Your responses to these questionnaires can be used in different ways by different researchers. This study takes approximately 60 minutes to complete and you will be credited 0.5 credits for your participation.
Studies conducted online do not require you to come to campus to participate. As such, they are to be completed by you at your leisure on your own personal computer. Upon signing up for an online study, you will be given access to the study link and will be able to complete the study any time prior to the time slot deadline that is convenient for you.
If you sign-up for a lab study, you will be required to come to a location on campus to complete the study. The time slot information will consist of a time, date and location; however, if you are unsure about any of the time slot information, please feel free to email the researcher for that study.
If you are not present for your time slot, the researcher will assign you a “unexcused no-show” unless they are informed otherwise. To avoid this, please notify the researcher as soon as possible if you know you will be unable to attend the study or if there were unforeseen circumstances to explain your absence. The researcher is responsible for posting timeslots and distributing credits, so if you are unable to cancel your timeslot online, please email the researcher to notify them. If you are inquiring about pending credit, please contact the researcher for that study.
If you are unable, or unwilling, to participate in studies through the LSRPS, you can also submit reviews of academic articles to earn bonus credit. All articles reviewed must include primary research — editorials and research reviews are not eligible. You may submit up to three reviews per semester and each successful review is worth one bonus credit.
- Registering: Before you can submit any article reviews, you must self-register in the course. To do this, log in to your MyLearningSpace account, click on “self- registration” and register for the course entitled “Lazaridis School Research Participation System Alternative” for the appropriate semester. Once you complete the registration process, you should see “Lazaridis School Research Participation System Alternative” in your list of courses.
- Identifying eligible journal articles: The course information on MyLearningSpace for the LSRPS includes a list of acceptable journals. You will notice that there are a few journals listed for each of the areas. Please select an article from one of the journals listed as acceptable for Accounting, Marketing and OB/HRM. Further, ensure that the article chosen corresponds to the course for which you aim to apply the credit earned (e.g. if you are submitting the review to earn credit for a marketing course, please select an article from one of the marketing journals listed).
- Submitting reviews: To submit a review, go to the content browser for the Lazaridis School Research Participation System Alternative in MyLearningSpace and download the file containing details of the submission process. You will need to submit all reviews to the MyLearningSpace dropbox that has been set up for each section of each course that is eligible for bonus credit. If you have any questions, please email the system administrator at lsrps@wlu.ca.
- Receiving credit: The administrator will review all submissions at the end of every month. If your review is considered successful, you will be awarded one credit in MyLearningSpace. At the end of the semester, all credits earned through article reviews will be imported into the LSRPS.
Q. How will I be contacted by administrators and researchers?
A. In the event that administrators or researchers need to contact you, they will do so by email. When you create a SONA account, you will need to enter an email address, and it is through this email address that they will contact you. Please note that researchers will only be able to identify you by your five or six-digit SONA ID number.
Q. How do I reassign credits?
A. When you earn credits in the LSRPS, the system will assign those credits to one of the courses that you have indicated you are enrolled in. As such, you have the opportunity to reassign credits to other courses that you are enrolled in. However, please keep in mind that all credits earned for participating in one study must be assigned to the same course. For example, if you earn one credit for participating in a study, you cannot assign half of that credit to one course and half to another course. The whole one credit needs to be assigned to the same course.
Q. Can I earn credit through study participation and the completion of article reviews?
A. Yes. All credits earned will be imported into the LSRPS at the end of the semester. You are welcome to earn credit using the LSRPS, the research participation alternative assignment or a combination of the two.
Q. I didn’t receive an email with my login information. What do I do now?
A. If you do not use your @mylaurier.ca email address to register, you will not receive an email with your login information. When this happens, the administrators delete these accounts from the system since there is no way for the user tied to this account to log in and participate in studies. The account is typically deleted within a few days and you can repeat the process for requesting that an account is made for you, but be sure to enter in your @mylaurier.ca email address. If this does not work, please email the system administrator at lsrps@wlu.ca.
Q. I have not yet been granted credit for participating in a study. What should I do?
A. Administrators typically ask that researchers credit participants in their studies within four days of the time slot. If four days have passed since you participated in the study, email the researcher for that study directly as they are responsible for distributing credit to participants.
Q. On the “Studies” page, it says that there are timeslots available for a study but that I am not eligible. Why am I not eligible to participate?
A. There are numerous reasons as to why you may not be eligible to participate in a study. For example, if you have completed a study in the past that is very similar, or is identical, to a study that currently has available timeslots, you may be ineligible. The reason that these limitations are sometimes applied is to ensure that the integrity of the data being collected through the LSRPS is protected. The administrator cannot speak to the restrictions imposed by a researcher for a specific study; therefore, your best course of action would be to contact the researcher directly.