[lookit-research] New feature on Lookit - External Studies!

[Melissa Kline]

Dear Lookit users and friends,

I'm writing with a major update to Lookit's functionality: researchers will
now be able to post links to studies that are conducted outside of Lookit.
This feature was envisioned by former director Kim Scott and has been in
the works for some time - we are excited to be releasing it at last!

Up until now, all studies listed on Lookit have also run within Lookit,
using the internal experiment runner. In contrast, the new “External
Study'' type recruits participants via Lookit, but the experiment itself
takes place elsewhere. This opens up the possibility of running
asynchronous studies with any desired platform (e.g., a Qualtrics survey),
as well as scheduled studies (e.g., a 1-on-1 Zoom session with a
researcher). External studies will appear alongside other Lookit studies in
search results and listings, and be advertised to eligible Lookit
participants who choose to receive emails.

The External Studies option will be visible to all users right away, and it
will be possible for all researchers to create and begin editing them.
However, we will begin by *approving* these studies for posting more slowly
as we adapt the study review process and make sure that Lookit continues to
work smoothly for researchers and families.

If you would like to join the first round of external studies, or if you
have any questions about this feature or anything else on Lookit, please
contact me at mekline at mit.edu. If you are new to using Lookit as a
researcher, please also have a look at our "Start Here" guide
<https://lookit.readthedocs.io/en/develop/researchers-start-here.html#start-here>
.

My thanks especially to CJ Green, our programmer, for all his work
implementing this, as well as to Mark Sheskin for developing study review
policies!

- Melissa Kline Struhl
Lookit Executive Director
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mailman.mit.edu/pipermail/lookit-research/attachments/20211014/4b220827/attachment.html