Welcome to the CLEER Human Subject Recruiter
The Computer Laboratory for Experimental Economic Research, located at Wichita State University,
is one of a handful of facilities in the nation specifically designed to further our understanding
of human behavior through economic experiments. If you are interested in earning money as a
participant in our economic experiments, we invite you to register an account with us. Registered
students will periodically receive invitations to experiments via email. Your account information
will be kept secure with all reasonable precautions, and we will not share account information with third parties.
Registered students may deactivate (and reactivate) their accounts at any time.
If you have any questions, please see our FAQ below.
Frequently Asked Questions
It depends on the experiment. Nearly all experiments run at WSU will be
electronic, so most of the time you will be interacting with other subjects
via computer. Each experiment is focused on different economic questions,
so the decisions you will be required to make will depend on the experiment
you are participating in. Many experiments involve buying and/or selling decisions
in an electronic market. Some involve voting. In other experiments you are simply
asked to choose between alternative payoffs. Of course, this is not an exhaustive
list. Any experiment you participate in may involve some, all, or none of these decisions.
Most of the experiments will be in the Computer Laboratory for Experimental Economic
Research (CLEER). The lab is located In the basement of Clinton Hall, in Room 024.
There are two ways in which you make money in an economic experiment. The first way is the show-up
bonus, which is a flat payment (usually between five and ten dollars) that we give you just for
showing up on time.
The second way you make money is the decision based payments. This is where you will earn the
majority of your money. Every experiment is designed in such a way that the decisions you make
result in earnings. You will be paid your experimental earnings, plus the show-up bonus, all in
cash (U.S. dollars) immediately following the experiment. If the experiment is more than one day,
all money will be paid at the end of the last day.
In large part, that is up to you. Since most of your money comes from your decisions, we cannot
guarantee you any amount of money besides your show-up bonus. However, please remember that it is in
our interest to make subjects happy with their earnings. We want you to be a repeat customer, so to
speak. So we try to design the payouts so as to be competitive with hourly wages for on-campus
employment, so long as you perform well in the experiment. The experience of experimental economics
labs at other universities has been that roughly 95% of the people who participate in one experiment
participate in another.
For the most part, experiments will be funded with money from the Market-Based Management Institute,
a non-profit research institution based in Wichita. However, faculty at WSU may also obtain research
funds from organizations like the National Science Foundation, or the International Foundation for Research
in Experimental Economics. Occasionally, private businesses will fund experiments as part of consulting
contracts.
We completely respect the privacy of our student subjects. While we do require some information, such
as your email address, we use them only for the purposes of recruiting and paying you for the experiments.
We will not give or sell our database in part or in full to anyone outside of the experimental lab. Also,
while the database is online, all reasonable precautions are taken to keep your personal information secure.
Very important. Our experiments require subjects to read through instructions and become comfortable
with the user interface. Subjects arriving late give us less time to run the experiment. This hurts
both the researchers and the subjects, as the researchers will end up with less data and the subjects
will have less time to make money.
A good rule of thumb is to show up at the lab ten to fifteen minutes early. This will give us a good
buffer of time to run the experiment on schedule. It also minimizes your chances of forfeiting the show-up
bonus. Customarily, subjects who show up more than five minutes late will not be paid the show-up bonus
because they did not show up on time.
Absolutely not. You don’t even need to have attended a single economics class. The only skills you
must have to participate in an economic experiment are literacy and the ability to enter your decisions
into a computer interface via the keyboard and mouse.
The typical experiment lasts one to two hours. If an experiment is longer than this, we usually break it up
over the course of a few days.
Of course! We hope that you will participate in as many experiments as possible. It is important to
remember, however, that once you have participated in a particular experiment, you will often be ineligible
to participate in that specific experiment again.
You are certainly welcome to talk to your friends about the experiments and encourage them to create
a profile in our database. You may also bring a friend with you to an experiment in hopes that both of
you can participate. However, understand that only students who have been recruited and confirmed for an
experiment can expect to participate or be paid the show-up bonus. If you bring friends, there is always
the chance that we will be able to use them for an experiment, in which case they will be paid in full.
There is no guarantee, however, that we will be able to use them, and thus there is no guarantee that they
will make any money. The only sure way for them to make money is to sign up for an experiment in advance.
No. Economic experiments are never designed to involve physical discomfort or injury. Participating in
an economic experiment is as safe as working on your computer at home.