If you register with StudyResponse, you will have the opportunity to participate in online surveys dealing with a variety of topics. The studies are conducted by researchers at many different universities and research-oriented organizations. StudyResponse participants have offered positive reviews of their experiences with us, such as this  Amazon.com review of StudyResponse.

Below are a list of answers to questions you may have about participation:

What is StudyResponse?
StudyResponse is a university project dedicated to helping academic researchers do quality online research. We only do academic research - that is, research that is related to science or practice but does not pertain to a product or service.

How do I register as a research participant?
Just click here to go to the registration page. You will be asked to provide basic information about yourself. The registration process will take about three minutes.

What's in it for me?
Researchers using StudyResponse generally offer "random draw" incentives for participation, typically in the form of a gift certificate of about $50 to a popular online vendor such as Amazon.com. Whether you are selected to receive an incentive will depend upon the number of participants and the number of incentives supplied by the academic researchers who use StudyResponse. Some studies provide direct payments to each participant who is involved in a study. These payments generally range from $2 to $5 and are also in the form of gift certificates to Amazon.com or a similar online vendor.

In addition to incentives, some research offers the opportunity to learn about you, your family, or your job, based on responses that you provide to the researchers' online surveys. It is always your right as a research participant to obtain a report of the research in which you participated and this can be accomplished by contacting the researchers whose names and email addresses are shown in the study recruiting messages you receive.

But I would rather have cash. Why gift certificates?
Sending cash through the mail is a no-no and we can't fax it to you either. We could send you a check but we would have to get your social security number first, and most people would (rightly) not want to provide that. Gift certificates to large online retailers like Amazon.com are as good as cash and allow you to shop from the comfort of your computer.

What about my privacy?
When you register for StudyResponse, you will be asked to provide some basic information about yourself, such as your name, age, ethnicity, occupation, etc. This information will be used for research and compensation purposes only. StudyResponse acts as a remailer; that is, researchers tell us what they would like to do, and we e-mail participants on their behalf. So, if you receive an invitation, it will be from StudyResponse on behalf of an academic researcher. We do not sell or provide your contact information for any purpose other than legitimate academic research. StudyResponse studies are generally anonymous: That is, in most studies researchers can not obtain access to your email address or any other contact information.

Will I get unsolicited e-mail or phone calls?
No. We are not a marketing company. We do not make our lists available to marketing companies or organizations wishing to offer you products or services. We send you messages about studies and only about studies.

Will I be asked to evaluate products or services?
No. We do not support commercial research unless it is conducted by academic researchers at a registered research institution. Some researchers (e.g., in business schools) do conduct research on the way products are packaged or presented, but this research does not aim to promote or sell a particular product, but rather to understand consumer behavior generally.

I'm currently affiliated with Syracuse University. Can I sign up?
No, at this time we cannot allow any students, staff or faulty members to be on our participant panel.

How does the whole process work?
You begin by completing our panelist registration page. We keep your contact information in our database. When a researcher asks us for panelists like you, we email you and provide a link to the researcher's survey. You follow the link. We provide you with an ID number that you enter into the researcher's survey. You complete the survey. Most surveys take between 5 and 15 minutes. The researcher gives us a list of ID numbers of panelists who have participated. We use a random number generator to choose the ID numbers of those who will receive an incentive. The StudyResponse staff matches ID numbers to contact information and gets in touch with those panelists to deliver their gift certificate.

How do I know who won past prizes?
You can look at our incentive information page to see who won the prizes in many recent studies. For privacy reasons we do not provide the full names of these individuals, but the list will give you a sense of the number and value of prizes that we award. To put everything in perspective, we are one of the larger buyers of gift certificates from Amazon.com both in terms of the number of gift certificates and the total dollar value.

I don't live in the U.S. or Canada. Can I still participate?
Definitely. The vast majority of our studies are in English, but if you are reading this you are probably good to go. We have thousands of panelists from Canada, Australia, U.K., India, and dozens of other countries. We provide incentives to our international panelists through Amazon's international affiliate sites.