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Psychology vocabulary · Research Methods and Statistics

Participant

Meaning in psychology, with examples

/pɑːˈtɪsɪpənt/nounCore term

In psychology, participant means: A person who takes part in a research study, for example by completing tasks, answering questionnaires or being interviewed.

In Turkish: katılımcı

How it is used

The preferred term in modern psychology papers and ethics forms; older texts say subjects. Researchers recruit, screen, randomise and debrief participants, and method sections usually begin with a 'Participants' subsection.

Example sentences

  1. We recruited 120 participants through university mailing lists.

  2. All participants gave written informed consent.

Common collocations

  • recruit participants
  • debrief participants
  • participants were randomly assigned
  • study participants
  • informed consentA person's voluntary agreement to take part in research or treatment after being told clearly what it involves, including risks, benefits and the right to withdraw.
  • sampleThe group of people actually studied in research, chosen from a larger population so that the results can, ideally, be generalised to it.
  • experimentA study in which the researcher deliberately changes one factor and measures the effect on another, while keeping other conditions as constant as possible.
  • random assignmentPlacing participants into the groups of a study by chance, so that each person has an equal chance of being in any group and the groups are similar at the start.

This word in other fields

The same English word can have a different meaning in another field:

More terms: Research Methods and Statistics

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