TEACHING
Experiment preparation
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
. |
Preparing the experiment
With your experiment description written you can move to actually doing the experiment!
The next challenge is to find the participants and organise a schedule of the experiment.
- Finding participants can be helped if you provide incentive such as some money, cinema tickets, book vouchers....
- The age, gender, occupation and other characteristics of your participants need to be carefully looked at. Is any of these or other details of relevance to your experiments (for example left and right handed people, undergraduate student, smoker, etc...)
- Establish a clear list of requirements about your participants and then use it to recruit your participants with at least a week notice before the day of the experiment
- Always arrange to keep records of your participants if possible with their telephone, email or other details
- Give the participants details about the time it will take them
- In general ensure there is all the tools they might need such as pens, paper...
- Provide water and napkins, but no coffee or tea as it will have an effect on their moods.
- Be as neutral and give only the minimum necessary explanations about your experiment BEFORE the tests.
- Make sure to book the venue and put signs around for directions and to avoid people knocking on the door or disturbing you in any way.
- use your common sense to set up the venue!
- The experiment setting should be as identical/neutral/normal as possible with only what you want to measure/assess/evaluate of any difference.
|