Guide to childlanglab

Welcoming a new family to the lab

Purpose

To thank new families who sign-up to participate, and update their record to determine whether they are eligibile for lab studies.

Procedure

  1. (Start when) We get an email that a new family has signed-up via our interested families form
  2. Locate the sign-up in the database, in Kids
  3. Check whether the participant has signed up before by searching for their name in the database
    • If they have signed up before, mark them as a Duplicate (in the dropdown menu beneath their name in their profile)
    • If they have not signed up before, change their status to:
      • Lab eligible - if they are between 0-11.99 years of age, a native English speaker, and have no hearing loss, vision loss, and/or language delay (more info on the latter below)
      • Not eligible - if the participant is 12.0+ years of age, is not an native English speaker, and/or has hearing loss, vision loss, and/or language delay
        • Hearing loss, vision loss, or language delay does not automatically make a participant ineligible
        • Sometimes parents leave notes that help us decide whether or not their child is eligible
          • For instance, a child had speech delay at some point which has been resolved with speech therapy - they would most likely be eligible, although this is something you would need to run by the lab manager or PhD student just to check!
        • If there are no notes in the participant’s profile or more info is required to determine their eligibility, reach out to them using the following templates:
          • Hearing loss

            We noticed on the interest form you completed that you answered “Yes” to the question “Does your child have any hearing loss or difficulty hearing?”. We want to let you know that our studies typically have an audio component and involve seeing some pictures and hearing some sounds on the computer. Do you think [participant] will feel comfortable doing that? Additionally, we would like to learn more about their hearing loss to determine whether they would still be eligible to participate in our studies. Would you be willing to provide any additional information related to this matter?

          • Vision loss

            We noticed on the interest form you completed that you answered “Yes” to the question “Does your child have any vision loss or difficulty seeing?”. Is the vision loss able to be corrected with glasses? We want to let you know that our studies typically involve seeing pictures and hearing some sounds on the computer. Do you think [participant] will feel comfortable doing that? Additionally, we would like to learn more about [participant]’s vision loss to determine whether they would still be eligible to participate in our studies. Would you be willing to provide any additional information related to this matter?

          • Language delay

            We noticed on the interest form you completed for [participant] that you answered “Yes” to the question “Has your child experienced any language-related delays or disorders?”. We want to let you know that our studies typically involve seeing some pictures and hearing some sounds on the computer. Do you think they will feel comfortable doing that? Additionally, we would like to learn more about [participant]’s language-related delays or disorders to determine whether they would still be eligible to participate in our studies. Would you be willing to provide any additional information related to this matter?

      • Spam - if the profile has silly names, an IP address that is outside of the U.S., or anything else that does not make sense
  4. Feel free to email a parent to ask for clarifications if you notice inconsistencies or anything needing clarification in their profile, such as:
    • Incorrect age

      Our records indicate that your child is [#] years old. Could you please confirm whether this is correct? If not, please let us know so we can update their profile!

    • Languages - write to parent if:
      • Child is noted as multilingual but has only English listed as their fluent language

        We noticed that [participant] is noted as multilingual but for their fluent languages, only English is listed; in that case, could you please let us know what their native language is and specify what other languages they speak?

      • Child is neither noted as multilingual nor as a native English speaker but English is listed as their only fluent language

        We noticed that [participant] is neither multilingual nor a native English speaker but for their fluent languages, only English is listed; in that case, could you please let us know what their native language is and specify what other languages they speak?

  5. Once a participant’s status has been updated, send them a corresponding email
  6. The email interation should be noted automatically in the profile’s record
    • For clarification emails, note that you have sent an email to ask for more information in regards to something

      Sent an email asking for more info on language delay on 9/10/24.

    • And of course, once the parent provides some more information, make sure to add that to the profile notes as well!
  7. (Done when) Tag the email as interested-families in gmail and archive

FAQs