Linguistics Beyond the Classroom:
Information for Linguistics Researchers
 

Useful links:
LBC Homepage
LBC Research Project List
List of projects from previous semesters
UH Committee on Human Studies
FAQ page for human subjects by the Dept of SLS
NIH on-line training in human subjects
NIH Office of Human Subjects Research
 

Forms distributed by the LBC program:
PDF version of Information for Researchers
PDF version of the Human Subjects Request Form
Word template to make sign up sheets
PDF version of a sample research questionnaire (student participants fill these out)

Note: Some browsers (e.g. Netscape 7) are producing error messages when attempting to open the pdfs.  If this happens, try downloading the pdf instead of opening it within your browser window, or try another browser (e.g., Netscape 4; Internet Explorer).
 

Sample completed forms for the UH Committee on Human Studies:
Sample completed exempt form (sentence completion)
Sample attachments to an exempt form listing materials
Sample completed expedited form (eye tracking)
Sample consent form #1 (sentence completion)
Sample consent form #2 (word repetition)
Sample consent form #3 (eye tracking)
Sample feedback form #1 (sentence completion)
Sample feedback form #2 (eye tracking)
 

Information for researchers about the program

Introduction
The Linguistics Beyond the Classroom (LBC) program of the Department of Linguistics serves to expose undergraduate students to advanced research and researchers in linguistics, and to create a human subject pool for the department.

As a student, faculty member, or visitor to the department, your research projects can be part of the LBC program in either of the following two ways:

Option 1
Collect data for your research from students participating in the LBC program.  Examples of this use:
- Ask native speakers of the language you are studying for grammatical judgments.
- Have students participate as human subjects in your phonetics experiment.
- Have the dependent children of students participate as human subjects in your language acquisition experiment.

Option 2
Allow students to observe you at work in a research activity.  Potential examples of this use:
- Students observe you eliciting forms from a native speaker, while you explain the procedure.
- Students observe you coding a videotape for sociolinguistic categories, while you explain the procedure.
 

Program Requirements
 

  1. Each research activity must be no more than one hour in length for each student participant.
  2. All research activities must be approved by the LBC committee.  For option 2, contact the LBC committee.  For option 1, see below.
  3. All LBC activities must contain a clear educational component appropriate for undergraduate linguistics students. Researchers will be required to provide educational handouts (written feedback forms) to all participants; these must be written in language accessible to in undergraduates in introductory linguistics courses.
  4. There is currently no limit set by the LBC committee on the number of participants you can use in your research. Use of participants from the LBC program is open to any student, faculty member, or visitor in the Department of Linguistics.
  5. The LBC committee will ensure that  at least one research project per semester will be made open to any student who must fulfill the LBC requirement (although the number of participant slots may be limited). Other research projects may place limits on participants, such as age or native language. You may be asked to make your project open to a wider range of students than necessary for your research question.
  6. The LBC program provides alternates activities to participating as subjects in research.  Currently, the primary alternative is an option to watch a video related to linguistics research.  Failure to provide alternatives to participating in research is a violation of research ethics and could jeopardize the LBC program and other research involving human subjects at UH.
  7. Students will fill out a brief participation credit questionnaire after participating in research activities.   These will be supplied to you by the LBC committee. Research project participation questionnaires will be turned in to course instructors, who will use them to keep track of credit for the students.  The questionnaires will then be turned into the LBC committee and passed back to you, who will get feedback from the forms.
  8. Approved research projects will be limited to those in which filling out the participation credit questionnaire would not subject the student to social or emotional risk (e.g., by identifying the student to his/her instructor as a member of a stigmatized category).  All option 1 research projects must have completed review with the UH Committee on Human Subjects before they can be approved by the LBC Committee.
  9. Research projects will be approved on a rolling basis.  A website listing research project options will be updated throughout the semester.
  10. The LBC committee will work with the UH Committee on Human Studies to verify that the LBC program is in compliance with regulations on the use of human subjects.  Individual investigators will still be responsible for completing a human subjects review for each research project.
How to Follow Option 1 -  Use of Ling Students as Human Subjects
 
  1. Submit to the LBC: your APPROVED human subjects forms, notification of HS approval/exemption, 12 copies of your written feedback form, and the human subjects request form .
  2. If your study is approved by the LBC, we will give you a set of questionnaires to distribute to student participants and post information about your study on the LBC website.
  3. Notify the LBC when you are done collecting data, and return any unused questionnaires.


If you have any questions, comments, concerns, or suggestions for improvement, please direct them to:

Amy Schafer
Chair, Linguistics Beyond the Classroom Committee