Increasing the Efficiency of Data Collection With a Research Participation Night

Data collection can be a frustrating experience for student researchers due to difficulty in scheduling appointments with participants. To increase the efficiency of research project data collection, we organized a Research Participation Night in which volunteers were incentivized to participate in as many experiments as time allowed. By offering course credit, pizza, and other prizes, we attracted 95 participants who completed over 250 experimental sessions, accounting for 35% of the experimental sessions completed during that semester. We have outlined here how to organize such an event, which is particularly suitable for collecting data for a variety of relatively short experiments. It is highly recommended for student researchers struggling to recruit research participants in a short period of time.