[CogSci] A new, open, field-wide resource for online studies - the Parent and Researcher Collaborative (PaRC)

[Children Helping Science]

Dear Colleagues,

We know many of you are converting to online testing during the pandemic.
We are writing to introduce a new open platform, available to everyone
doing online research with children, and we invite you to join our Parent
and Researcher Collaborative (PaRC)! We have created a website (
https://childrenhelpingscience.com) connecting families and researchers.
Researchers recruiting children can list and showcase their studies on this
website, and families looking for opportunities to participate can search
and browse various studies. When a family finds a study they want to do,
they click on a link to go to whatever website the researcher has set up
for participants.

The vision of PaRC is to provide a single, crowd-sourced, user-friendly way
to channel families to studies from researchers anywhere in the world. This
will make it easier for parents and children to contribute to science and
easier for researchers to recruit participants for their online research.

Importantly, researchers retain full independence in recruiting for and
running their studies: although families who find one study on the website
will hopefully then participate in many more, there is no central database
of families, and the studies are not “hosted” on the website. Instead,
parents choose which researchers to contact. Think of it as a “craigslist”
for online studies -- the more of us advertise our studies through the
website, the more we will benefit from our collective effort!

We hope you will check it out and find it helpful!  The link is here:
https://childrenhelpingscience.com/ and the password is *baby* (for the
moment, it is open only to researchers and so it is password protected).

You might be wondering: “How can I list my study here?” It’s easy! You can
click [here
<https://www.dropbox.com/s/wyb9usnjy0kueee/ChildrenHelpingScienceSignUp.pdf?dl=0>]
to see a picture overview, or read the rest of this paragraph: Just
navigate to the bottom of the page and you will see an “Add your study”
link. This will take you to a form where you can provide all the necessary
information, including things that do appear on the site (e.g., the picture
that will identify your study) and things that are necessary to submit but
are not parent-facing (e.g., information about your IRB/ethics approval).
Importantly, we want to be as inclusive as possible. You can list specific
inclusion criteria, and we would love to include studies that are
recruiting children who speak languages other than English, are part of
special populations, etc.

Here are some other things to keep in mind about posting your study:

   - The list is study-based (rather than lab- or institution-based). Our
   goal is to ensure as broad and inclusive a platform as possible.
   - You can post as many studies as you like and update them as often as
   you like.
   - We will send you an email when your study has been posted.
   - To avoid having parents click on studies that are no longer active,
   you will get an email every few weeks asking if you want to keep the study
   up; otherwise, the study will be removed.
   - Study listings are randomly shuffled each time the page is loaded, so
   that different studies appear at the top of the list.
   - The website has a way for parents to search for studies by age group,
   so your study will appear on the pages for any relevant age groups.

*Next Steps*

Please note: the site is currently open only to researchers in the field.
It is otherwise embargoed.  *Please do not share information about this
link with families or media just yet* -- our official open launch to
parents will follow in a week or so. *We will send a follow-up email on the
official open launch date when we remove the password from the site to let
you know that you can begin recruiting here*. In the meantime, if you are
both a parent and a researcher, of course, please feel free to enroll your
child in the many studies already posted.

When the link is live, you will be able to send a link that will direct
parents to your dedicated “read more” page, featuring your study. Once
families have participated in your study, we hope you will encourage them
to go back and check out other studies on the site. We’d love to see this
site featured everywhere.

If you have specific questions about the site, please feel free to contact
us at our email address below. If you have general suggestions, resources,
or hard-won experience that might be helpful to other researchers embarking
on online testing, the site's FAQ includes a link to the SRCD Commons
<https://commons.srcd.org/communities/community-home/digestviewer/viewthread?GroupId=109&MessageKey=0871d623-bd97-48c5-b8e4-54ecda9de9d8&CommunityKey=bd3d326e-b7db-49bf-abbb-73642ac0576c&tab=digestviewer&ReturnUrl=%2fcommunities%2fcommunity-home%2fdigestviewer%3fcommunitykey%3dbd3d326e-b7db-49bf-abbb-73642ac0576c%26tab%3ddigestviewer>
where
there will be a forum for open discussion.

Thanks in advance for checking this out! We hope you will contribute. The
more studies we can post, the more families will use this resource -- and
more participants means better science for everyone.


Sincerely,

parc at childrenhelpingscience.com
Mark Sheskin
Elizabeth Bonawitz
Hyowon Gweon
Julian Jara-Ettinger
Candice Mills
Laura Schulz
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