Running Behavioral Studies With Human Participants

A Practical Guide

FEATURES & BENEFITS

• Feature Summary: The summary is in descending order of importance, with item one representing what the authors' consider the most important contribution of the book.
• Coherent view of how to implement the experimental process, including detailed discussions of the setup and running of behavioral studies, provides readers with a practical guide for implementing the experimental process.
• Concrete contextualized examples speak to the diverse needs of the HCI, human factors, and cognitive science communities.
• Practical coverage of risks and problems that can be anticipated and avoided helps contextualize ethical challenges that might arise during the course of designing, running, or concluding a study—demonstrating the principles of the Belmont report within an experimental context and helping researchers better anticipate potential ethical challenges.
• Three running example scenarios drawn from industrial and academic settings help reinforce the major themes of each chapter by presenting those themes in slightly different ways through the challenges and situations confronted by the characters in each scenario.
• Example forms offer models from which new experimenters can derive their own experimental documents (such as IRB applications, experimental scripts, consent forms, and room layouts) that meet their particular research needs.
• Practical advice and examples of challenges associated with experimental setup and execution (such as how to set up experimental rooms, manage late or missing participants, and devise an effective experimental script) underscore and humanize key points in a memorable way, helping readers recall the major points of the book.
• Strong pedagogy includes: Further readings, an appendix on running studies online, questions at the end of each chapter, and publication paths and publication types that encourage researchers to take ownership of the research process and engage in research in both a directed and methodical way.