An undergraduate-run psychology research laboratory at UF is using crowdfunding to raise money for its studies.
The Life Satisfaction and Excellence Lab is currently trying to raise $3,000 on GoFundMe.com, a crowdfunding website.
The money will help pay off the lab’s debts.
It will also pay for a website it uses to track its research progress and pay people for taking surveys.
The lab has trouble raising money through grants because it’s completely run by undergraduate psychology students, said Tiffany Dawson, a research assistant in the lab.
Dawson, a 21-year-old UF psychology senior, said the lab doesn’t get attention from organizations with grant money.
He said that is because graduate and doctoral programs receive the money instead.
The crowdfunded money will go toward two programs the lab currently uses.
One, Excellence University, is a website the lab uses to track progress toward goals for its research.
“Everyone in the lab has an account in Excellence University,” said Megan Turner, a 21-year-old UF psychology junior who works in the lab. “It’s really helpful for you to make sure you do complete your goals.”
The other program is Amazon Mechanical Turk, often called MTurk, which sends out the lab’s surveys to a wide range of people to improve survey results.
The survey participants get paid for each one they take.
“It gives us a different sampling base,” said Turner, the fundraising chair for the crowdfunding project. With MTurk, the lab can send its surveys to a much larger population.
“It’s more generalizable as opposed to so focused on the UF student population,” Turner said.
Approximately $2,000 from the campaign will help pay off current debts, she said.
The other $1,000 will go toward future studies.
[A version of this story ran on page 3 on 4/17/2014 under the headline "Psychology lab starts GoFundMe campaign to buy programs"]
