For directions to the IBL, please click here.
The IBL is used by Ivey faculty who research questions in Behavioural Economics. This includes faculty from Marketing, Organizational Behavioiur, Managerial Accounting and Control, Information Systems, Entrepreneurship, as well as many other areas. Check out some of our featured researchers.
All data collected at the IBL is used for academic purposes only. The researchers are all Ivey faculty or PhD students and they analyze the study data with the goal of publishing their research in academic papers journals or books and for presentation at academic conferences. Unless explicitly stated in the Letter of Information you will receive for each study you take part in, the data will only ever be presented in an aggregated format and so your personal identity can never be known. Any personal information about you and all anonymized data is stored securely by the BehavLab. All of our procedures have been vetted and approved by the Research Ethics Board at Western University prior to testing.
The SONA Identity Code is not the same as the Username you need to login to SONA. It is a five- or six-digit string (e.g., 25698) that guarantees your anonymity when taking part in studies in the lab. Your SONA ID is always included in the reminder emails sent by SONA the day before an appointment for the lab. It is also found in SONA under "My Profile". You will need this ID for all studies, either in-lab or online.
There is a “Forgot Password?” button on the lower right of the SONA homepage. If you’ve forgotten your username you will need to send an email to behavlab@ivey.ca with your name in order to get help retrieving this information. An email will arrive with your username and a new temporary password.
You can participate any time the IBL is running studies and we run studies whenever classes at Western are in session! For the 2023 and 2024 academic term, we run Student Credit Pool studies from the September 7th to April 8th. We are closed when there are no classes in session; during Reading Weeks, during exam periods. We are open to run studies from 9am to 5pm. Sometimes there are exceptions to this (e.g., a study that takes place somewhere else on campus or in non-business hours), but this is always made clear in the study information on SONA.
While classes are in session you will receive emails from the SONA system about new studies and new timeslots being added to SONA. You are free to sign in to SONA at any time, and indeed we encourage you to do this, to check on study availability.
The number of credits required depends on the class you’re in that requires research credits. For Business 1220 this means 3 credits, for Business 2257 this means 2 credits, and for HBA1 this means 2 credits. You can always check on how many credits you currently have as well as how many you need by looking at your account information on SONA.
If you need to cancel an appointment please do so by signing in to your SONA account and cancelling it yourself. You can usually do this up to 12 hours before the appointment time start though some studies may have shorter windows. If you’re within this 12 hour window and need to cancel you can do this by emailing behavlab@ivey.ca. This way someone else can sign in to take part in the study and you will not receive an Unexcused No-Show on your account. Too many Unexcused No-Shows will result in an automatic Inactive account and you won’t be able to sign up for further appointments until you have contacted the Lab Manager and it will be left for her to decide if your account can be reinstated. Note that reinstated accounts will become inactive again as soon as an additional No-Show occurs.
Much like any other appointment you make, if you cannot make your appointment you need to let us know! You are taking a space that someone else could have used and we make plans for each study based on the appointment signups. You can cancel the appointment yourself within 12 hours of the appointment start time or, if within that 12-hour window, you can email behavlab@ivey.ca and let us know. You must do this before the appointment time though or the Unexcused No-Show will be added to your account. We don't accept post-appointment cancellations.
Most of the studies that we run in the lab are running multiple participants at once and require that we follow very specific instructions from our faculty researchers. This often means that we have to start at the appointed time and that we have all participants subject to the same instructions at the same time. This means that even if you are only 2 minutes late you may find that we have begun without you and that we cannot let you start the study after we’ve closed the door. Again, this is just like other appointments! We expect you can show up on time or cancel if you cannot, otherwise you will receive and Unexcused No Show on your account.
Whether you’re late or don’t show at all, all of the scheduled participants who are not present in the lab when we begin will receive an Unexcused No-Show on their account. Two Unexcused No-Shows will result in being unable to sign up for any more studies until a period of three weeks have passed.
We assign an “Excused” No-Show when we have heard from a participant that they will be unable to attend their appointment and we were unable to cancel them. This permits them to sign up once again. We also sometimes assign a No-Show as excused when a participant shows up on time, but we are unable to run them in the study, but we would like to give them to opportunity to sign up again at another time. The Excused No-Show has no ramification on your account, but the Unexcused No-Show does have consequences for your account. You will be frozen out of the SONA system as soon as you have two Unexcused No-Shows. No such penalty occurs for Excused No-Shows.
We certainly guarantee that more than enough timeslots are provided throughout the academic year to make sure everyone receives their credits. If you wait until late March, we cannot guarantee that you will be able to complete your credits. All appointments are available on a first-come, first-serve basis once they are up on SONA. By the end of March there are typically only a few studies still running so you cannot be guaranteed completion of credits.
The last date for research credits will be the last day that we are running studies in the lab. This includes both credit by research participation and credit by alternative to participation. For the 2022-2023 academic year this is April 10th, 5pm.
The IBL manager usually sends out a mass email from the SONA system to participants who are part of the pool each week that classes are running. Sometimes more often than once a week depending on scheduling. In your account, at the bottom of the “My Profile” page you can opt in to also receive a weekly email from the SONA system itself about what studies are currently available to you based on what class you’re in, if you still require credits. No emails will be received once you’ve completed your credits.
The IBL updates classlist information in SONA at two points in the fall term, first, when the last Add date happens (typically in late September) and when the final Drop date happens (typically in late November). These dates are posted on Western’s registrar site and in the Course Calendar. Once we have the updated lists we make every effort to have the changes made in SONA within a week. This means that if you add a course with credits required, you will receive your initial SONA letter sometime in late September, early October. If you drop a course with credits required, you may still receive emails from the SONA system until early December when we get the finalized class lists. If at either of those times you changes sections in a course that require credits, we will strive to make those changes as soon as they’re noted. This has no effect at all on your credits in SONA.
Most of the time you will only be receiving credit. However, researchers who publish in Behavioural Economics disciplines often offer a payment as well as credit. Payments can be a flat fee or a performance-based fee. They could be paid immediately upon completion of the study, or they might be paid at a later date. All of this information can be found in the full descriptions of the studies advertised on SONA.
Once you’ve completed your required credits you will no longer receive the updates about studies and timeslots from the SONA system. You cannot sign up for or complete further credit studies. If you would like to still take part in research studies and be paid for your time you can join the mailing list for our Paid Participant Pool. Agreeing to be added to the mailing list only means that you are agreeing to receive announcements from the SONA that has been set up for the Paid Pool Participants. If you wish to take part in these studies you can sign up for the mailing list jere on our ivey.ca pages for the Paid Pool.
Once on you would sign up the same as you would for the Student Credit SONA. Another alternative is to apply to volunteer in our Research Assistant Mentorship Program. You can speak to the IBL Manager about this or look for the advertisements on the same IBL site linked above.
You cannot be credited for your participation in the Paid Participant studies. The Student Credit Participant Pool and the Paid Participant Pool are completely different SONA sites and are not connected at all. There are many reasons for these to be separate but the most important differences are that the Paid Participant Pool is available to our researchers all year, the studies can be any amount of time from as short as 10 minutes to 2 hours, and when classes are in session the studies running through the Student Credit Participant Pool are priority.
If there is still time available before studies end at the end of term you simply wait until the three weeks are up since your last Unexcused No-Show in the SONA system. If the three weeks will extend past the last day that studies are running in April, then you will need to investigate the alternative to research credit essay information above.
Here are some general rules that all participants must follow when taking part in research:
- Participants will not be permitted to have food or drink with them at the computer workstations. Any food or drink brought into the lab can be discarded in the garbage cans or left on a cupboard to be picked up later. No consumption of food or beverages is permitted unless it is a part of the study.
- Phones will not be permitted at the computer workstations and must be turned off or muted and kept in pockets or bags for the duration of your participation. Participants who interact with their phones at any stage during their participation may be asked to leave without payment.
- Participants are not allowed to disturb other participants.
- Participants who continue to turn up late or who fail to show up to appointments will be removed from the mailing list for the Paid Participant Pool.
- Participants must take tasks seriously and follow instructions carefully. If clarifications are required, please raise your hand when in lab and research assistants can help you.
- Do not discuss study procedures or content with other participants who are yet to take part in the same study.
Please direct all questions, concerns, or inquiries to behavlab@ivey.ca