Participate in Studies

Participating in research is a great way to learn about psychology and the current, cutting edge research being conducted in our department. Our research covers a wide variety of topics including social behavior, cultural differences and similarities, stereotyping, personality, recognition of emotion, reasoning, impulse control, learning, and memory. We encourage people from different backgrounds and perspectives to participate in our studies to provide us with a rich and complete understanding of these complex phenomena.

The Georgetown Research Volunteer Program (GRVP) is a program hosted by the Department of Psychology that matches researchers to interested volunteers. This page provides information about GRVP resources for Georgetown undergraduate students wishing to participate in research, for other members of the community who wish to participate in research, and for researchers who wish to recruit participants for their studies.

For Georgetown undergraduate students seeking to participate in research

Undergraduate students 18 years of age or older can sign up online to participate in research for monetary compensation (usually $10/hour or more) or course credit.

Then provide your name, a user ID (of your choosing; many students use their NetID), email address, and phone number. Select from the list of courses those in which you are currently enrolled if you would like the option to receive extra credit in those courses.

A password will then be sent to your email account, and you can use this password and your login to sign up for studies on the SONA website.

On the website, you can view a list of available studies by clicking on “Studies” on the top toolbar. Studies with openings will have “TIMESLOTS AVAILABLE” listed. Click on the name of the study for more information, including eligibility and restrictions. Please make sure that you meet all of the requirements before signing up.

To sign up to participate, please click “View Timeslots for This Study.” Choose a timeslot convenient for you, and click “Sign Up.” Review the confirmation of the time and location of the study, then go to the designated location during your time slot and participate. You will receive payment or credit following your participation.

For individuals who are not Georgetown undergraduate students and who are seeking to participate in research

Individuals 18 years of age or older who would like to participate in research for monetary compensation (usually $10/hour or more) and who are not undergraduate at the university can sign up online. Parents of infants and children 17 years or younger may also sign children up for studies.

Through the site you can learn about laboratories conducting research at Georgetown, see examples of current studies, and sign up to enter the database (or contact labs directly for any study you are particularly interested in).

Signing up is free and does not confer any obligation to participate in studies.

For Georgetown University researchers wishing to recruit study participants via GRVP/SONA

To recruit via this database, please contact the GRVP coordinators at grvp@georgetown.edu. The coordinators will then create an account for your laboratory and will provide you with more detailed information about using the site. Upon receiving your login information, laboratory researchers can log in, create study profiles, and upload basic required information, which will include a copy of the study’s current IRB approval in PDF format. Each study will be sent to the coordinator for approval. Once a study is approved, the researcher will be able to search for participants using the database. Researchers can, for example, identify a list of potential GRVP participants and download their contact information to invite them to participate in a study. Or the researcher can create online timeslots that allow SONA study participants to sign up for the study online.

There is no fee for being listed on the GRVP site, but the fee for using the GRVP database and the SONA system is $100 per year for each site. The GRVP coordinator can go over any of these sites in more detail with the researcher.

Researchers are encouraged to direct new study participants to the GRVP login site, where they can enroll to participate in additional studies at the completion of your study (applicable only to participants recruited from a source other than the database itself).