The Behavioral Lab is located on the 6th floor of the CBA North Building:
CBA 6.497, CBA 6.499, and CBA 6.402
McCombs School of Business
University of Texas at Austin
2110 Speedway Austin, TX 78712-1170
There are three areas available to reserve in the laboratory: the Workstation Room (WS), the Large Conference Room (LR), and the Small Conference Room (CR).
Workstation Room "WS" (Computer Lab Room - CBA 6.499)
The workstation room contains 12 networked PC workstations with headsets, cameras, and microphones. The room can be used as a language laboratory, and movies or video clips can be played on individual PCs or shared with other PCs in the room. Example characteristics and capabilities of the room include:
- Each workstation can use network software to share information with other stations.
- Tailored multiple choice surveys or questionnaires can be administered.
- Each station can be controlled so that researchers are able to:
- Monitor any user’s activity in real time.
- Monitor up to twelve (12) workstations simultaneously.
- Assign users to workgroups so that group members can communicate without disrupting others.
- Share their screen with all users or any particular user or work sub-group.
- Completely control any user’s workstation.
- Lock out any or all user keyboards.
There are many other capabilities of the workstation room, which is supported with Genesis and Media lab software. Genesis is a software-based control system featuring the newest technologies available for multimedia interactivity.
Large Conference Room with Table "LR" (Focus Group Room - CBA 6.402)
This room contains several rows of tables and numerous chairs with laptops at each seat. This room can be modestly reconfigured depending on the needs and demands of the room in periods both before and after your study and layout request, for example, work groups and focus group interviews.
Small Conference Room "CR" (CBA 6.497)
This smaller room has no projection or observation facilities, but can be used for the storage of materials, working with participants one on one, or similar experiments. Alternatively, this room can serve as a control location for administering experiments taking place in one or both of the other two rooms (in the case that they are not being used for other experiments). If you have a small study that doesn’t require projection or observation, we recommend reserving this room to free up the space for other studies.
In addition to space and software resources, the lab has the following resources available to researchers:
- A team of Undergraduate Research Assistants (URAs) who are trained and supervised to facilitate most of the data collection in the Behavioral Lab. Please note that URAs can work only during their scheduled hours. You can request their assistance using the Paid/Alternative Credit Study Request Form.
- A Lab Coordinator who can advise on study best practices and assist with the logistical details of your study. The lab coordinator can also provide advice for accessing paid study pools, and how to incentivize so that researchers may reach their target number of participants. Ultimately, researchers themselves are responsible for making studies attractive enough to bring in their desired number of participants.
- A dedicated IT specialist who provides technical support and can configure lab space to meet your research needs.
The day-to-day operations of the Behavioral Research Laboratory are managed by the Lab Coordinator. To learn more about these resources available to researchers who use the Behavioral Lab, please email Annika Liu.
Laboratory usage policies and procedures are the responsibility of the Behavioral Research Laboratory Committee. Please follow those policies and procedures when reserving and utilizing the laboratory facilities.
After you submit your study to the institutional review board (IRB) for approval, fill out these forms to make use of the Behavioral Research Lab. Read more about the IRB study approval process.
- Paid/Alternative Credit Study Request Form: If you need to use the lab for a study involving paid participants (or alternative credit outside of MKT 337 and MKT 320F), this form needs to be filled out and submitted at least three weeks in advance of your desired date. However, this does not guarantee you a spot at your desired study launch date — please give as much advanced notice as possible.
- While it is the responsibility of researchers to oversee their study while using the Behavioral Research Lab, they can request assistance from an undergraduate research assistant (URA) to help oversee paid studies during their scheduled shifts. Please fill out the Study Request form (outside of MKT 337 and MKT 320F) in as much detail as possible regarding your need for URAs, how many URAs are needed, and the type of responsibilities they will face as they assist you throughout your study.
Requests are final only after all requirements have been met. Actual use of the Behavioral Research Laboratory requires that a researcher has received prior project-specific IRB approval for the use of human subjects, and requests to use the lab should not be submitted until you submit your study to the IRB. Reservations are subject to cancellation if IRB approval has not been received two weeks prior to the conduct of the research and will be automatically cancelled if the project has not been approved one week before the time of the reservation.
Only McCombs School faculty members and doctoral students are permitted to use the Behavioral Research Laboratory at this time.
Lab Rules
- Research projects take top priority over all other uses of the Behavioral Research Laboratory.
- Requests are only considered final when IRB approval has been received.
- Lab usage is first come, first serve. Application forms may be submitted up to four months in advance of the conduct of the research, and no later than three weeks prior to the proposed request week.
- Review lab policies and procedures
Lab Access
Ph.D. students are welcome and encouraged to use the Behavioral Research Laboratory. However, their reservations must be made jointly with a McCombs School faculty member (even for dissertations). Ph.D. students have the same priority as faculty members for laboratory usage.
At least one principal investigator must be a McCombs School faculty member. The faculty member principal investigator has personal responsibility for Behavioral Research Laboratory equipment during the approved time of use. The lab coordinator oversees laboratory access and maintains the laboratory keys. After lab access is granted, it is the responsibility of the faculty member principal investigator to personally oversee student laboratory usage or recruit a URA to do so using the Paid/Alternative Credit Study Request Form.
Additional Resources
SDA Requests: Faculty members can submit Supplemental Data Assistance (SDA) Requests if they are seeking temporary assistance on a task associated with their research efforts. Ph.D. students or McCombs faculty members who need assistance with a particular aspect of their research can submit a request using the SDA Request form to recruit a URA to execute this task, not exceeding 5 hours per URA per week, as they are short-term projects (therefore, a task that requires 10 hours of work in one week will need two URAs). These tasks can be as simple as downloading articles into a folder, or be more research adjacent, such as coding qualitative data. Lab URAs will volunteer for those requests that match their skills, capabilities and interests, and the lab coordinator will put faculty members in contact with the URA(s) selected to execute the task. Note that, as with all tasks involving the URAs, there needs to be some component that provides education or learning about research.
Cancellation Information
You can cancel an existing request by sending an email to xinran.liu@mccombs.utexas.edu.
Still have questions? Email Annika Liu.