Participant recruitment

Warning

Before starting participant recruitment, ensure your study is formally approved by the ethical committee (if you didn't do this yet, check out this page). Prepare this well in advance.

Make sure you are using the latest and correct (approved) recruitment materials, information letters, demographics questionnaires and informed consent forms (ICFs). All recruitment materials (e.g., flyers, posters) must include the study's end date as specified in the ethics application.

Healthy adults

Healthy adult participants can be recruited in different ways:

1. Through NeuroSPACE's participant database

   • Including past participants who explicitly agreed to be contacted for future research and individuals who have expressed interest in participating through word-of-mouth referrals, science outreach events, etc.
   • If you are looking for participants from a specific age range, gender, or education level, contact Silke and/or Klara to have a look in the database.
   • Reversely, if you test participants, ask them if they can be contacted again in the future, and let/help them register themselves in our database (link).

2. Through social connections of the researchers involved and/or by sharing your announcement via social media

   • For example, announce your experiment on this facebook page, which collects the latest info on psychological experiments at KU Leuven.
   • Make sure to read the guidelines on recruiting participants via social media provided by the ethical committee that approved your study (guidelines SMEC, guidelines EC onderzoek).

3. Through the online recruitment system of the faculty (first-year students & paid participants; see below)

4. For testing non-Dutch speaking or other more specific populations that cannot be acquired through a student pool you can also use the paid Prolific

   • Please note that payment for this service will need to occur through a PO statement (so not just a credit card payment). For this you will need to contact your financial antenna.

Recruitment through the faculty's online recruitment system

The Experiment Management System (EMS), managed through Sona Systems, is the Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences' platform for recruiting and managing research participants. Access it here.

EMS can be used for:

• 👥 Individual or collective studies
• 🎓 Studies offering research participation points
• 💶 Studies offering financial compensation
• 💻 On-site or online studies

EMS support

For questions or technical support, ask your colleagues for support, consult the participant and researcher tutorials from Sona, or
contact ioco@kuleuven.be.

Who can participate?

First-year psychology students can participate in research through EMS as part of their research methods course:

• Students are required to obtain 18 research participation points (PPs) to pass, by participating in collective and/or individual testing sessions (credits can not be transferred between academic years).
• Credit-based recruitment takes place approximately from the beginning of October until the end of May.

Other students and non-students can participate in paid studies.

Consider recruitment bias

The EMS pool is strongly connected to the university population (faculty PPW). Studies recruiting primarily through EMS may therefore produce samples that are relatively young, highly educated, female or otherwise not representative of the general population.

Set up your study

Setting up an EMS study involves three main steps:

Create an account

Role	How to get access
Participant	Create an account through the EMS website
Researcher (PhD/postdoc)	Request an account by contacting ioco@kuleuven.be
Master's thesis student/intern	Access can be requested by the supervisor

Researchers should provide their U-number, first name, last name and KU Leuven email address when requesting an account.

Obtain ethics approval

You can start preparing your study in EMS before obtaining ethics approval, but you cannot request EMS approval until you obtain formal ethical approval.

Apply for ethics approval well in advance and make sure that the planned recruitment and eligibility criteria are consistent with the approved ethics application.

When submitting a study to EMS, you will need to provide your ethics approval code and the approval's expiry date.

Set up your study

To add a new study, follow the steps below (for more details, please watch this tutorial and check out the latest info provided by PPW):

1. Complete the study information (make sure to double check all info before going to the next step; changes will require re-approval)
2. Request approval of your study (this might take a few days, max. 10)
3. Add timeslots for participation (timeslot = participation deadline for online studies)
4. Set sign-up and cancellation deadlines (cancellation deadline >= sign-up deadline)
5. Add accessibility information
6. Activate your study once it is ready and approved

Check your study settings, timeslots and recruitment status regularly. Deactivate studies when recruitment is no longer ongoing, toggle back when you resume.

Be mindful of how inclusive and accessible your study is

As students rely on these experiments to collect the necessary research participation points for their research methods course, make sure to think about inclusivity and accessibility. Always specify whether the study location is wheelchair accessible and if students with disabilities can participate (e.g., motor, auditory, visual impairments, etc.). Ensure all first-years are eligible by putting the lower age limit at 16 in the ethical dossier.

Use the Sona Mobile app

The Sona Mobile app can be used to facilitate experiment scheduling (e.g., adding time slots, but not to set up your study) and assigning participation points.

Collective sessions

Students can receive a maximum of 12 PPs per academic year through collective sessions. These are online studies that require large sample sizes. Researchers are usually asked to provide the study information to the IOCO coordinators by the end of August, after which a schedule will be drawn up for the whole academic year.

Researchers are responsible for the practical organisation of collective sessions (e.g. booking rooms, equipment, setting up the study in EMS, credit granting, etc.). In the EMS, you can create collective sessions by allowing multiple participants to access the same time slot.

An overarching informed consent is provided through EMS, but specific informed consent (and ethical approval) is still required for each collective session.

Running a study

Informed consent and confidentiality

Before participation, participants must receive the full study information and provide informed consent, in accordance with the approved ethics application.

• For on-site studies, consent should be obtained on paper.
• For online studies, consent can be obtained digitally via the EMS, usually by explicitly checking a consent box.

Only collect personal data that is necessary for the study, and process them in accordance with the approved ethics application.

Keep participant and research data separate

Do not directly link the EMS code or Sona ID to a participant's research data. Assign each participant a study-specific participant ID according to the approved data management procedures, and use this ID to link research data across different study components.

For studies where no identifying information is required, participation via the EMS can remain fully anonymous. Some studies may require identifying information for administrative purposes:

• Payment: For paid studies, you need to collect the participant's name, address, email address, and bank account details to process payment.
• Follow-up communication: If participants wish to receive study results or other follow-up information after the study, you may need to collect their email address.

Keep confidential and research data separate

You should keep such administrative/contact information separate from the research data, in a secure, access-restricted and password-protected file on your personal SharePoint. Do not include these details in the research dataset.

Personal data collected solely for payment or follow-up should be retained only for as long as necessary for that purpose and deleted when it is no longer needed, in accordance with the approved data management procedures.

Research participation points

For credit-based studies:

• Participants receive 0.25 PP per 15 minutes of participation.
• Set the appropriate course restrictions when creating the study (correct academic year).
• Record participant presence ("show-ups") and assign participation points preferably the same day, but always within one week of participation.

How to assign credits

To assign participants their credits, surf to EMS > Sona > Login > uncredited timeslots, mark the participant as completed, and click save.

The Sona Mobile app can be used for quick credit granting by scanning the QR code in the reminder email to the participants.

Mixed studies

If a study offers financial compensation and research participation points, set it up as a credit study and assign 0 credits to participants who are paid to avoid that the timeslot is left open. You can add a comment that a payment was made.

Financial compensation

The standard financial compensation indicated in the current EMS guidance is €10/hour, although exceptions may apply for high-effort or aversive studies (such as fMRI or EEG).

Across NeuroSPACE, participant compensation was increased in October 2025 to €15/hour for behavioral and EEG studies, and to €30/hour for fMRI studies. If you are not sure, check your informed consent form for the correct compensation rate.

Detailed instructions for reimbursing participants

For paid studies, participant reimbursement from grant money is processed using an Excel file, that you send to the financial antenna (in our case, Agna). It is advised not to do this for each participant separately, but batch them together to ensure efficiency.

Prepare the reimbursement file as follows:

1. Use the appropriate KU Leuven reimbursement Excel template, depending on whether the participant has a Belgian IBAN or not (Belgian Payment Excel, International Payment Excel).

2. Do not change the columns or structure of the Excel templates!

3. Enter the required participant information:

   • Name (surname and first name)
   • Address (if the participant refuses to give you their private address, you may use the KU Leuven address)
   • Payment amount
   • Payment reference ("mededeling"): [surname participant]_[code ethics approval]_[initials of the researcher]
   • IBAN
   • BIC (if the IBAN is international)
   • Country code (if the IBAN is international)

4. Send the completed file to Agna, together with the following information:

   • Title of the study
   • Code of the ethics approval
   • Grant number to pay the participants from
   • Name(s) of the researcher(s)
   • How is the amount calculated (e.g., participants receive €15/hour)
   • In the subject of the email, make sure to include your name and a number/month (this helps us to find a specific payment and the original email associated with it)

Protect payment information

Payment information is confidential personal data. Keep it separate from research data in a secure, access-restricted and password-protected file on your personal SharePoint. Retain only for as long as necessary and delete it when it is no longer needed, in accordance with the approved data management procedures.

No-shows

We distinguish between excused and unexcused no-shows.

• An excused no-show is communicated to the researcher, typically by email.
• An unexcused no-show is not communicated and results in a −0.5 PP penalty.
• After 5 unexcused no-shows, the participant's EMS account is blocked.