Submitting a TESS proposal
- Who is eligible to submit a proposal?
- How do I submit a proposal?
- How long can my proposal be?
- When can I submit a proposal?
- What information must my proposal include?
- What kinds of proposals are most likely to be successful?
- My proposal is neither experimental nor quasi-experimental. Will TESS accept it?
- How many items can I include? How many subjects can I have?
- Why are there limits on what I can ask for?
- What other items are included in the standard TESS data delivery?
- What additional items can be added to the TESS data delivery for my study?
- What if I need more respondent-questions than described above?
- What if I want to sample a specific subpopulation?
- What if I want to conduct an endowment experiment?
- What if I want to conduct an experiment that involves deception?
- Can TESS provide information on response times?
- Are there limits on the number of experiments that I can run on TESS?
Who is eligible to submit a proposal?
Any faculty member, postdoctoral fellow, or graduate student of any social
science or social science-related department anywhere in the world. We regret that we cannot provide opportunities to any other individuals and groups.
How do I submit a proposal?
All proposals must be submitted through our website. All listed authors or co-authors of a proposal must first fill out a TESS user profile. After filling out a User Profile you will be sent a Username and Password, which which are required to submit a Proposal.
Each proposal must also designate a contact author. The contact author must be listed first on all proposal documents and is the person to whom all official TESS corresponds will be held.
How long can my proposal be?
Proposals are limited to five pages of text (including footnotes/endnotes), plus references, up to two pages of tables, and the actual survey items to be included.
Text must be double-spaced and 12 point font. The total size of the electronic submission must not exceed 2 MB. Proposals that exceed these limits will be rejected by the system or returned by TESS staff.
When can I submit a proposal?
TESS is accepting proposals now and reviews them on a continuous basis. The current funding arrangement guarantees that TESS will run at least through 2011.
What information must my proposal include?
To be successful, a proposal must include:
- A title, provided at the top of the first page of the proposal.
- A thorough description of the study design.
- An explanation of how the study will make a valuable contribution to science and society.
- An explanation of how people in other scientific disciplines will benefit from this study.
- A request for a particular number of respondent-items with justification.
- An appendix with actual questions and description of stimuli.
In sum, the proposed experiments must evaluate important and clearly-stated hypotheses and be likely to generate new and broadly-applicable knowledge.
To preserve the anonymity of the review process, we ask that all proposals be stripped of content that identifies the proposer. Since proposals are linked to their authors by their user profiles, there is no need to include any of this information in the proposal itself. Proposer names should not be listed on the front page or any page of the proposal, although references to previous research that are in stated in the third person are acceptable. If a proposal includes self-identifying content, it will be returned to the contact author along with a request that it be resubmitted without this information.
What kinds of proposals are most likely to be successful?
We seek proposals that break new ground in the hypotheses they investigate, the procedures they employ, or both.
The key to TESS success is to win over reviewers in your chosen field. Ideally, your proposal should offer the potential for a clear scientific advance whose relevance expands beyond any one discipline.
Proposals that report trial runs of novel and focal ideas will be viewed as more credible.
While not required, it is desirable if the proposal is conducted in coordination with non-TESS data collection endeavors, such as traditional laboratory experiments or field work.
My proposal is neither experimental nor quasi-experimental. Will TESS accept it?
No. See here for an elaboration of what we mean by an experimental design.
How many items can I include? How many subjects can I have?
The "size" of a TESS experiment is a function of both the length of the experiment and the number of respondents (N). The shorter the experiment, the more respondents on which it can be conducted. This page provides the maximum N for studies of different length, as well as guidelines for how study length is calculated. Note that experiments that involve subsampling will involve some % reduction in the maximum N.
This allotment does not include the demographic and socioeconomic data that TESS provides for all studies. The standard delivery includes:
- Gender
- Race/ethnicity
- Age
- Education
- Household income
- Employment status
- Marital status
- # of members in household
- Whether R is household head
- Home ownership
- Whether R has Internet access (other than the WebTV access provided for those respondents who otherwise do not have Internet access)
- State of residence
- Party affiliation
- Political ideology
- Religious affiliation
- Religious service attendance
More information on the precise measurements provided for family income is available here.
Why are there limits on what I can ask for?
TESS provides a free service to investigators whose proposals are endorsed by the external reviewers, relevant Associate PI's and can meet standard human subjects requirements without placing an extraordinary burden on TESS resources. That TESS is a collective endeavor implies that there are strict limits on what services we can provide to any one investigator.
The resource limits stated herein are real. Proposals are more likely to succeed, both in the review process and then once out in the field, if these limits are strictly interpreted.
What other items are included in every TESS data delivery?
A list of the items included for free in the TESS data delivery from Knowledge Networks is provided here.
What additional items can be added to the TESS data delivery for my study?
TESS is conducted in the course of Knowledge Networks panel surveys, which also include sets of "profile" variables. Investigators in TESS studies may add profile variables to their studies, which are counted as just a fraction of an original survey item. The profile variables expected to be of most interest to TESS investigators are those on the Public Affairs Profile and the Health Profile.
What if I need more respondent-questions than described above?
In a limited number of cases, TESS can provide additional respondent-questions. Such requests, however, are required to pass higher review standards than regular proposals. If the request entails substantial additional costs on TESS, we will have to reject the proposal or ask the proposer to pay the additional cost.
What if I want to sample a specific subpopulation?
TESS can provide samples of subpopulations, depending upon the type of subpopulation sought and the expense involved in reaching an adequate number of people within such a group.If, however, the request entails substantial additional costs for TESS, we will have to reject the proposal or ask the proposer to pay the additional costs.
What if I want to conduct an endowment experiment?
An endowment experiment is an experiment in which a real-stakes reward is offered to participants. For example, participants may be offered a choice between some payoff for sure and a larger payoff that is subject to a gamble, where a payment in real money is made to the participant in accordance with their choice. TESS can be used to perform such experiments, but the investigator will have to provide funds (1) to cover the actual payments to respondents and (2) a 15% surcharge to Knowledge Networks for handling the distribution of payments to respondents. In other words, if an endowment effect distributes $5 on average to 1000 respondents, the investigator will need to provide $5750 ($5000 for the payments and $750 for the surcharge).
What if I want to conduct an experiment that involves deception?
All TESS studies require IRB approval from the investigator's home institution and so would any deception would likewise need to be approved. In addition, any deception would need to be approved for fielding by Knowledge Networks, which has conducted studies that provide a short 1-2 paragraph textual debriefing afterward.
What if I want to conduct an experiment on spouses?
The KN panel samples multiple co-resident members of a household, and so an experiment in which spouses are participants is possible. We may not be able to offer the same sample size for such a study as we would for an experiment that does not sample multiple members of the same household, but this would need to be worked out on a case-by-case basis?
Can TESS provide information on response times?
Yes. TESS can provide information on response times in milliseconds and can also present stimuli to experiments for a length of time specified in milliseconds?
Are there limits on the number of experiments that I can run on TESS?
There are no limits on the number of times investigators may use TESS. In fact, we encourage investigators to build on their previous TESS findings for subsequent proposals.