Yes. We were poor college students (my husband and I) and I had an opportunity to participate in trials for a brand new type of contraceptive that you took every single day with no variance in active ingredient. I took it a couple of years and then quit and got on an FDA approved one. That's the one I got pregnant on............twice. :)
Oh my gosh. That is crazy. I did a birth control study, too, but I didn't last long. The side effects were horrific and it was a ring-type deal that was beyond awkward. It's really odd that the tested one didn't work for you though. You must be "lucky."
Many moon ago my wife and I worked for the USDA. They were involved in many studies regarding food consumption. So since we worked there we joined a six month study regarding how people determined portions without actually measuring like using a measuring cup. As an example you go into a restaurant and order a slice of pie. Can you tell the approximate portion by just looking at it? Or the amount of fries on your plate. We received the equivalent of three meals a day including desserts and snacks for a whole week. So for six months we didn't have to buy food.
Interesting. No doubt, that one probably determined that we can't... most people, myself included, are terrible at it. The only time I did well with it was when I actively measured food because I was tracking calories. I turned that into a bit of a game and tested myself to see if I was getting it right, but now that I'm out of practice... yikes. Very cool that you didn't have to buy food too.
UBC (University of British Columbia) sometimes advertises for volunteers in their psychology department. I wore a monitor that measured my heart activity for a month. Long time ago can't remember what if anything as compensation.
Another time I was given a sealed capsule that contained 3 $20 bills. I was supposed to take one at a time out on specific dates. Or cheat and take them all out any time. Also supposed to record what I spent the money for. I managed the discipline to keep the schedule and returned the capsule after 1 month.
Ooh... That is interesting. I wonder what the results of the capsule one was. I've read a lot about those ones and they tend to conclude that people are more apt to "cheat" if they think there will be consequences or if they think they're being watched, but they're usually supervised trials. I wonder what they were measuring and how it went. O_o
A few. The last one was by the NYDEC measuring heavy metal/ PCBs/Mirex blood concentrations of people who eat fish and game caught in NYS. They just pulled people's fishing licenses at random and asked for participation. It was all win. Got a free full blood toxin screening and $200 for doing it.
What's even cooler is my cadmium, mercury, and lead blood concentrations were well below acceptable levels even though I eat a lot of game and fish I catch. Same for Mirex and PCBs.
When I was a student at University of Hawaii, I volunteered for every psychology/linguistics study I could. Everything from gender role perception, to how effective online dating services are, to how effective two different methods of learning Chinese are.
yes, once yrs ago, when i was working in the resorts and it was about 4 months after my mother died. my older brother, i have two of them, one younger, he decided he wanted to have our family do a john hopkins study on me and my twin sister. we're both identical, anyways, my brother wanted us to do this study about our family and why me and my sister being identical twins, wanted to study why my sister had schizophrenia while i never got it even though we had the same genes. my father wasnt in the study cause he had altzheimers at the time.
I was living in the resorts at the time, they had this guy come out to interview me about it, i tried to schedule it when i didnt have to work and i met the guy in the main building and then we walked back to my dorm, he didnt know where i was so i met him there. i took him to my room, i had my own room, thought it would be better to do the study there since it was so personal i didnt want to do it in a public place, i dont remember how long we talked, it mustve been an hr or two. he asked a lot of questions and i just answered them. at the end i even got paid $50 for doing it. this was around 15 yrs ago. I didnt really care about the money, i just wanted to help. I never did find out the results from it cause the resort wasnt good about forwarding mail and i could never figure out who to write to about the results of the study but i always felt like i did something important by doing that, i felt like i took part in something so important even though i never found out the results of it. wish i knew how to find out, ive tried messaging them on facebook but i never found out. theyre probably still studying it. maybe i'll never know
I used to work for a psychologist who gave "tests" of some sort for research studies. That is all I did---hand out the forms. They filled them out, and I would collect them at the end of class. He was also a university professor. We tested students for about 6 weeks. The tests would take about an hour each. There were different classes.
Thriftymaid 