Frequently Asked Questions

Participant payment information is securely stored within the system and is only accessible to the lab administrator. Researchers must update participant status in SONA within 2 business days after each timeslot deadline. The VBL team then reviews these statuses, contacts budget holders for approval, and processes payments. For detailed instructions on updating participant status, denying payment, and handling special cases, see: Granting or Denying Payment.

Please add the following statement in the Acknowledgments section of your manuscript: We thank the VU Behavioral Lab (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam) for participant recruitment, lab usage, and data collection support.

Due to planning and registering, we require you to request physical lab studies at least 3 weeks / online studies at least 2 weeks before the session takes place, but preferably even earlier.

Yes. If no new time slots are added within 3 months, your study will be deactivated. This ensures that the system only displays active and available studies for participants.

Unfortunately, no external researchers are allowed to access the system. You can manage as a collaborator on their behalf.

Unfortunately, at the moment, external participants cannot sign up or receive payments through the system.

Prescreeners are standard questionnaires (e.g., demographic or personality surveys) that participants fill out once a year. These are stored outside of SONA and used to help researchers access important participant information without having to collect it repeatedly for every study. Due to VU's data privacy and storage policies, prescreening data is not stored in SONA and cannot be used to automatically filter or preselect participants for your study. While you can specify eligibility criteria (e.g., gender, age) in your SONA study description, students may overlook these and still register. As a researcher, you retain the right to reject ineligible participants or exclude their data. Please note that applying eligibility restrictions may significantly reduce your participant pool.