SONA Experiment Participation System and Qualtrics Online Survey System

There are two survey systems available for you to use, the SONA system and Qualtrics. Both systems require you to have a user account setup. All students will automatically be signed up to the SONA system each year and your login details will be emailed to you at the start of each academic year. You will also have a Qualtrics account ready for you, please make sure you don't create your own account, as this will stop your University Qualtrics account from working.

SONA

https://huddersfield.sona-systems.com

Participants

As a participant on SONA, you are required to earn credits by completing surveys and experiments that are available on the system. These credits amounts are different depending on your year of study, check your relevant handbook if you have not yet been told the requirements for your course/year. Alternatively you can look at these documents;

Participant Documentation

These will give you the credit information and also some general information on how to use SONA.

Researchers

As a researcher on the SONA system you will be able to create surveys and setup lab experiments for participants to sign-up too. The following documents will be useful for getting you started and explaining in more depth how to create surveys and experiments:

General guide for researchers.

Setting up 'auto credit granting' with Qualtrics

Detailed survey setup guide.

If you are setting up an experiment that will take place in a lab, please MAKE SURE YOU BOOK THE LAB WITH THE PSYCHOLOGY TECHNICIAN FIRST.

SONA has an internal survey option that allows you to use:

  • Multiple choice questions (Single or Multiple responses).
  • Open ended questions (Max 255 characters per answer).
  • Images(although these will need to be hosted outside of the system and linked via HTML).

The SONA system also has these features:

  • Instant pool of participants who can complete your survey, as all first and second years on the psychology suite of courses are required to earn credits by completing studies on SONA.
  • Surveys can be split into multiple sections. Each section can have multiple questions.
  • Sections can be randomised.
  • Participants are automatically granted credit once they complete your survey.

It is worth noting the limitations to the SONA system, as these may make the system unsuitable for your survey. The SONA system CAN NOT:

  • Record any form of timing/response time for questions.
  • Create Branching questions (i.e. a participant response can’t be used as logic to select the next question)
  • Randomise questions within a Section.
  • Let users pause or come back to a survey at a later date. Once started a survey must be completed in full (unless the participant chooses to withdraw).
  • Be used via mobile devices.
  • Be accessed by anyone not registered on the system. So nobody outside of the psychologysuite of courses will be able to take your survey.

Qualtrics

https://hud.eu.qualtrics.com/login

Qualtrics is a dedicated online survey system that you can use to send a survey to anyone via an email link.

Please DO NOT SIGN-UP FOR A FREE ACCOUNT. You will not have full access to all the tools or data, and the process of getting you a full account will mean all your data and surveys will be deleted.

Qualtrics can perform most of the functions SONA can, but with these added features;

  • Create questionnaires from existing templates.
  • Use branching, display and skip logic based on and using participant responses.
  • Partial completion (participants can return to a survey if they leave before the end).
  • Randomise answers to questions.
  • Export survey questions to a Word.doc
  • Time how long users spend on a page or set a time limit the survey must be completed within.
  • Embedded Images (you must check copyright before uploading them to the website)
  • Interactive experiments can be embedded into the Survey, or linked to an external site