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• Step 1: Application

  Fill in the application form.

  Give as much detail as possible.

  When reporting a cost estimate, you can use our cost estimate tool.

  When reporting the session duration, be conservative in your estimates. Sessions that exceed their maximum session duration may be ended early and/or have subject earnings increased at the discretion of the VCEE staff, and the VCEE reserves the right to cancel future sessions of experiments which exceed their maximum session duration and/or pay participants less than the minimum hourly rate.
• Step 2: Approval

  Applications are evaluated with respect to whether they comply with the common best practice standards in experimental economics. These are:

  - to not deceive subjects in any way,

  - to provide appropriate incentives for participants, and

  - to not violate rules of ethical scientific conduct.

  The director of the VCEE and the managers jointly decide whether an application meets these demands. If not, the applicant is asked to provide further documentation. If the application is deemed acceptable and the personnel and planning situation at the VCEE allow, the application receives preliminary approval and moves to step 3.

  Consent Form and Ethics Approval

  For standard economic laboratory experiments at VCEE, the University of Vienna does not require participants to sign an “informed consent form” and no further approval by an ethics committee or “institutional review board” is needed. We provide ethics approval letter upon approval as requested. 

  These exemptions do not apply to non-standard experiments (e.g. when physical characteristics of participants like heartbeat or hormone levels are measured). External researchers are themselves responsible for obtaining any approval required by their home institution (e.g. University) or funding agency (e.g. National Science Foundation).
• Step 3: Detailed Preparation and Testing

  Requried Documents

  Details of the experiment must be provided to the manager of the VCEE at least 2 weeks before the first session can be run. The required materials include:

      1. a complete description of the design of each treatment,   

      2. a detailed script for the experiment (for the lab assistants - explaining what to do and say when),   

      3. instructions (written or on-screen for participants), and   

      4. programs.

  Note that the approval in step 2 is preliminary. Should any doubt arise about whether the experiment meets the best practice standards during the phase of detailed preparation, the preliminary approval is revoked and the applicant is asked to make appropriate modifications and submit a revised application (step 1). Once all required documents have been received, testing is conducted.

  Software

  We support experiments using zTree, oTree and Qualtrics. We offer a server for hosting oTree program. 

  Note that both oTree and zTree are citeware. Full details of the contracts can be found on the respective websites.

  Testing

  The programs and the script must be tested in full scale (i.e. with the full number of clients) and in the actual sequence before we can schedule the sessions at the VCEE lab (without subjects). Testing can be done by VCEE lab assistants or it can be done by the researcher with some in-house assistance. Once a successful test is completed, the sessions may be scheduled. Cancellation within a short notice may incur a cost of assistants payments.

  Please send us an email (vcee@univie.ac.at) to schedule the testing and sessions.
• Step 4: Scheduling the Sessions

  We coordinates the scheduling of the sessions with the wishes of the researchers. Once the schedule is decided, the VCEE initiates subject recruiting. Sessions may be cancelled at the request of the researcher up to 48 hours before they are scheduled to take place. Cancellation within 24 hours may incur a cost of show-up fee for registered subjects.
• Step 5: Running the Experiment

  Runing the sessions

  VCEE personnel take care of running the sessions. 

  Experiments are usually run by two VCEE assistants or one VCEE assistant and a researcher. Namly, at least one VCEE assistants is required to be present for the purpose of bookkepping.

  Failed Sessions

  In the event that a session is not carried out according to the script provided by the researcher (e.g. due to assistant error), the following rule shall apply. If overhead costs DO apply to the experiment (see below), the VCEE shall bear the costs of the session. If overhead costs DO NOT apply to the experiment, the costs of the session shall be charged to the experiment. 

  This implies that researchers who do not pay overhead costs should take extra care to guarantee the success of their sessions, either by attending their sessions in person and/or taking extra care in the preparation of lab assistant instructions.

  Participant Payments

  Usually participants are paid their earnings in cash in Euros immediately following the end of the experiment. Participants sign a standard receipt before leaving the lab. These receipts are stored electronically for bookkeeping purposes. 

  As a rule, participants are paid according to their decisions. The experimenter needs to calibrate the payments in the experiment such that the average payment to participants is at least 15 Euros per hour. 

  The experiment should be designed or calibrated such that no subject earns less than, say, 5-7 Euros per hour unless they make completely unreasonable decisions in any parts of the experiment.

  We do not require the researchers to have a show-up fee for subjects who actively participate in the experiment (but they are free to implement one if they want to). A show-up fee of 10 Euros is paid to subjects who show up on time but cannot participate due to restrictions (e.g., specific group size or extras).

  Payments via bank transfers are possible. 

  Data Storage

  A copy of all files (e.g. script, instructions, data) is stored on our servers. The payment data is stored separately from the behavioral data. All behavioral data is stored anonymously. Researchers are advised to make personal copies of the data immediately after the experiment.

  If you are planning to elicit personal data during the experiment (that includes email addresses or banking details) please make sure that you are following the DSGVO and contact us (vcee@univie.ac.at).
• Step 6: Refund

  VCEE pre-finances the payments to participants and lab personnel for smaller experiments (< 10,000 €) and sends a bill for reimbursement to the researcher after the last session. For larger experiments, in which we expect to have costs of 10,000 € or more, we might ask for an up-front payment of a part of the estimated costs.

  Reimbursement has to be made by bank transfer. The bill will list the following items: 

  Costs for All Users

     1. payment to subjects according to the signed receipts (average at least 15 Euros per hours), 

     2. cost for assistants (15.5 Euro per person hour), and

     3. material costs (e.g. disproportionate amount of copies, purchases of requestd equipments etc.).
  

  Additional Costs for External Users Only

      4. supervision and planning by the lab manager (50 Euros per hour), plus    5. an overhead of 20% (on points 1-4)

  Affiliates of the VCEE may be exempted from overhead (please indicate when submitting the application in step 1). The numbers given above are estimates. The specific terms are agreed as part of the approval in step 2.

  Taxes

  In accordance with University regulations, we do not deduct personal or other (e.g. VAT) taxes when paying participants – they are themselves responsible for reporting their incomes to the tax authorities. If external researchers have any special request concerning taxation in their home country, it is advisable to clear the issue in step 1.

  Original Subject Receipts 

  Original subject receipts are not provided for privacy reasons.
• Step 7: Publication of Results

  External researchers using our laboratory are requested to add the following statement in the acknowledgements of the paper: “We thank the Vienna Center of Experimental Economics (VCEE), University of Vienna, for allowing us to run our experiment in their laboratory.”

  The VCEE recruits subjects from our database using the ORSEE system. Subjects are student volunteers from all fields and various academic institutions in Vienna. 

  Acknowledgements for use of ORSEE and the experimental software (e.g. zTree, oTree) needs to be added as well.
• General Advice

  1. Seek advice: Applicants are advised to get feedback on their experimental design from other (experienced) experimental researchers (e.g. by presenting in an internal seminar) before submitting the application.

  2. Get involved: Steps 3 to 5 require detailed planning and active involvement of the researchers can help to avoid lapses.

  3. Earlier is better: The VCEE tries to accommodate the diverse needs of all researchers. Two weeks is the absolute minimum time required for preparation and planning. The VCEE may not be able to accommodate all requests within this time due to capacity constraints. 

  Further information (e.g. on the technical specification of the lab) can be obtained on the VCEE homepage or from the lab managers.