The joys of psych research

Today I collected some pilot data for this major project I'm working on in my lab.

I ran 4 participants and it was less than a success.

-Each one is supposed to take 1.5 hours. Every single session ran late (almost a full half hour late) even though we cut some of the tasks we worried about piloting.

- My RAs did not memorize their scripts which are the MAIN manipulation in my study, if it comes across as artificial we might as well not even bother. I can't even tell you how many times I've explained how important they and their performance is to this study, but alas it's the end of the semester so it's not eve worth it to read them the riot act.

- All 4 participants were totally suspicious, of course it is the end of the semester and after participating in all their psych required studies they can't help but wonder what we're really looking at.

- Some of our equipment wasn't working, it just all of a sudden quit so we missed a lot of the most interesting data.

- My post-doc mentor was being interviewed for some PBS special right when my first participant was scheduled and had to throw us out of the room we were scheduled for.

Tomorrow I'll have to sort out this whole mess and figure out what is worth saving and what needs to be overhauled. Gotta love data collection one day and data analysis the next.