Privacy Policy

We collect only what StudyLane needs to list studies, book appointments, record participation, and send research assistant applications to labs. What we hold depends on how you use StudyLane.

Information You Provide

• Account information: your name, UCLA email address, UCLA UID, password (stored by our authentication provider, not readable by StudyLane), and account role;
• Course-credit information: the courses you choose for each quarter, your study sign-ups and appointments, and your credit outcomes;
• Paid-study information: your bookings, appointment times, attendance, how you chose to be paid, and what the lab paid you;
• Screening status: whether you qualified for a study, how many attempts you used, and whether a researcher approved your screener (see section 3);
• Prescreen answers: About you (your date of birth, sex, gender, race/ethnicity, vision, the languages you speak, handedness, and any other questions in StudyLane’s core prescreen), which you answer before seeing studies, and the questions your course-credit pool asks, which can include questionnaires about your experiences, habits, mood, or health. Every About you question except date of birth can be answered “Prefer not to say”, and your pool’s questions are optional (see section 3);
• Email preferences, saved studies, and acknowledgments of course participation policies;
• Research assistant applications, if you apply to a lab position: your application profile, CV, statement, and answers to the lab’s questions (see section 7);
• For researchers: your name, email, lab, department, principal investigator, UCLA UID (on a researcher-access request), study listings, research assistant positions, IRB approval details, schedules, rooms, staff assignments, any public calendar feeds you connect, messages you send to participants through StudyLane, and notes you add to applications; and
• Support requests and, if you delete your account and choose to give one, the reason you left.

StudyLane does not ask for Social Security numbers, financial-account details, or medical records. Please do not send them.

Information Collected Automatically

• Sign-in and session information, such as when you last signed in and when you were last active, which StudyLane uses to sign out inactive sessions;
• Study-page activity, such as views, saves, and sign-up steps, recorded against a private random identifier rather than your name or email (see section 9); and
• Standard technical information that our hosting provider processes to deliver and protect the site, such as IP address, browser type, and pages requested.

Information From Others

• Researchers who invite you to a study by email, record your attendance, or award or decline credit;
• Survey or screening tools that a research team connects to StudyLane, which send back only a screening result or a completion confirmation (see section 6); and
• StudyLane administrators who set up quarters, courses, and instructors for course credit.

We use information only to run StudyLane, specifically to:

• Create and secure accounts and confirm that participants use a UCLA email address;
• Show study listings and help you filter studies you may be eligible for;
• Use your prescreen answers to show you only the studies you can take part in, and to fill in the languages on your research assistant application profile the first time you set it up (see section 7);
• Book, reschedule, and cancel appointments and send related reminders;
• Record attendance and course-credit outcomes, and report credit to the course instructors and university staff who need it (see section 5);
• Let research teams manage their own studies, rosters, and messages;
• Send your research assistant applications to the labs you apply to, and let those labs review them (see section 7);
• Review study listings before they are published;
• Send the emails described in section 10;
• Give researchers, administrators, and course staff aggregate statistics about their studies and courses;
• Fix problems, prevent fraud and abuse, and keep StudyLane secure; and
• Meet legal obligations and respond to valid legal requests.

We do not sell personal information, show advertising, build advertising profiles, or use personal information to train artificial-intelligence models.

Some studies ask short qualification questions on StudyLane. Your answers are checked when you submit them and are not stored. StudyLane keeps only whether you qualified, the number of attempts used, and when.

The directory’s eligibility filter (age, sex, and languages) runs in your browser. The values you enter stay in your browser tab and are not sent to StudyLane or to researchers.

Some studies use an external screener, such as a Qualtrics survey. StudyLane sends the screener a random screening reference and a link back to the study, not your name, email, or UCLA UID. The screener returns only “eligible” or “ineligible.” If a researcher reviews screener responses manually, they do so in their own survey tool, and StudyLane records only their decision.

Research teams write their own screening questions and are responsible for what they collect in their own tools.

The StudyLane Prescreen

The prescreen has two parts: About you, a core section from StudyLane that every student answers before seeing studies (every question except date of birth offers “Prefer not to say”), and an optional section from each course-credit pool you take a course in that quarter. You can update your answers at any time. StudyLane uses your answers only to match you with studies you are eligible for and, the first time you set up a research assistant application profile, to fill in the languages you speak for you to check (see section 7).

A research team can limit a study to students whose answers fit rules they choose, such as an age range or a questionnaire score. If your answers do not fit, or you have not answered a question the study uses, the study is not shown to you. If you answered your date of birth, sex, or languages, studies whose age, sex, or language requirements you do not meet are also not shown to you.

Research teams never see your answers. When they set up a study, they see only about how many students fit their rules, never a number below 5. If they add you as a walk-in, they see only whether you fit the study. Department admins and StudyLane administrators see totals for each answer, with any number below 5 hidden, and never individual answers. Your date of birth is used only to work out your age, and it can be corrected only by StudyLane support.

Some pools give course credit for completing their section once a quarter. That credit is recorded with your other course-credit records (see section 5); your answers are not.

Research Teams

When you sign up for, book, or screen for a study, the research team for that study (the lead researcher, team members, and assigned staff) can see:

• Your name;
• Your appointments, attendance, and, for course-credit studies, your credit outcome, the course the credit is for, and the random participation identifier used for the study’s survey;
• Your screening status for their study, and on screener review pages, your StudyLane email address;
• If they invited you by email, whether you have registered; and
• Replies you send to the study’s contact email.

For a study open only to specific students, the research team can also see the level and programs (school and major) you had entered on StudyLane when you signed up for it. They never see your prescreen answers (see section 3).

Study rosters do not show your UCLA UID, email address, other studies, course-credit totals, or email preferences. Researchers can message participants through StudyLane without seeing their email addresses. A researcher who is also a department admin sees UCLA UIDs only in course-credit reporting, not on study rosters.

For a paid study that pays through StudyLane, the lab’s admins, and the members they choose to handle payments, see your name, what you are owed, and your UCLA UID (for a BruinCard deposit) or email address (for an e-card), so they can pay you through UCLA’s Research Payment Portal. Each time they show or download them is logged. StudyLane never moves money.

Anything you give a research team directly, such as consent forms, survey answers, or study data, is governed by that team’s IRB protocol, consent documents, and institutional policies.

Labs You Apply To

When you apply for a research assistant position, the lab can see your application as described in section 7. Applying does not share anything about the studies you take part in.

Course Instructors and University Staff

For course credit, StudyLane administrators and authorized course or pool staff can see the course-credit records described in section 5. If course reports are turned on, your instructor receives a report by email. Course reports list each student’s name, UCLA UID, confirmed credits, and the course target. They do not include screening information, survey answers, or which studies a student took part in.

Service Providers

We use the following providers to run StudyLane. They process information on our behalf and only to provide their service:

• Supabase: database and authentication, including account emails such as sign-up confirmation and password reset;
• Vercel: website hosting and privacy-friendly page-view analytics without advertising cookies;
• Resend: delivery of StudyLane emails; and
• Google: only if a researcher chooses to connect Google Calendar (see section 18).

Legal and Safety Reasons

We may disclose information when we reasonably believe it is required by law, subpoena, or court order, or necessary to protect the safety of users or the public, investigate fraud or security incidents, or enforce our Terms of Service.

If StudyLane Changes Hands

If operation of StudyLane is transferred to another organization, such as a university, the information it holds would remain subject to this policy and to any agreement with that university. We would notify users before information became subject to a different privacy policy.

Course-credit records can be education records under the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA). These records are your UCLA UID, the courses you choose, your study sign-ups and appointments, and your credit outcomes and history.

We share course-credit records only with your course instructor, the department admins for your course, other authorized university staff who need them to award, review, or report credit, and the StudyLane administrators who run the course-credit system. They are not used for any other purpose, and they are never shared with research teams beyond what section 4 describes.

When StudyLane is used for course credit under an agreement with a university, StudyLane processes these records on the university’s behalf, under the university’s direction, and only for that purpose. The university’s FERPA policies and that agreement govern any further disclosure.

You can see your course choices and credit history in StudyLane at any time. To ask for a copy of your course-credit records or to request a correction, contact support@studylane.org or your course instructor.

StudyLane is not where research takes place. Research teams collect study data in their own tools, under their own IRB protocol, and are responsible for it.

StudyLane receives only what it needs to track participation:

• From external screeners: an eligible or ineligible result;
• From connected study surveys: a completion confirmation containing a random participation identifier, the survey’s response ID, and the completion time; and
• From research staff: attendance and credit decisions.

Survey links carry a random participation identifier instead of your name, email, or UCLA UID. The research team can see which identifier belongs to which participant so they can confirm completion and award credit, which means they can connect a survey response to your sign-up. StudyLane does not receive or store survey answers.

Labs can post research assistant positions on StudyLane, and students can apply to them. Applying is optional and separate from taking part in studies.

What You Provide

When you apply through StudyLane, the lab receives:

• Your name and UCLA email address, and the level and majors you entered on StudyLane;
• Your application profile: your year, expected graduation, relevant courses, experience, skills, the languages you speak, research interests, and the hours a week you are available;
• Your statement and your answers to the lab’s questions; and
• Your CV, if you choose to send one.

StudyLane saves your application profile and CV so you can use them again. Each application keeps a copy of them as they were when you applied, so later changes do not alter an application you already sent.

The first time you set up your application profile, the languages you speak are filled in from your prescreen answer, if you gave one, and you can change them. Labs see only the languages you save on your profile.

Some labs take applications on their own website instead. What you give them there is governed by their own policies (see section 14).

Who Can See Your Application

Your application can be seen by you, by the lab’s admins, and by the lab member who posted the position while they remain in the lab. They can see its status and history, and they can add notes about it that only they can see. Other members of the lab cannot see it. StudyLane administrators can see applications to provide support and keep StudyLane secure.

Labs never see your prescreen answers, your UCLA UID, the studies you have signed up for or taken part in, or your course-credit records.

How Your CV Is Stored

CVs are kept in private storage, never at a public address. A lab opens the CV sent with an application through a link that StudyLane creates after checking the lab’s access and that expires after five minutes. Your saved CV opens the same way for you. Labs see only the copy sent with an application, not your saved CV.

Withdrawing and Deleting

• If you withdraw an application, the lab can still see it, marked as withdrawn, with the CV you sent. You can apply again while the position is open, which replaces your earlier statement, answers, and CV copy;
• Applications, with their history, the lab’s notes, and the CV copies sent with them, are deleted two years after the position stops taking applications: when the lab closes it, its deadline passes, the lab stops confirming that a position without a deadline is still recruiting, or the lab is archived, whichever comes first;
• Your application profile and CV are kept until you delete your account. You can update them when you apply, and you can ask support@studylane.org to remove them sooner; and
• Deleting your account deletes your application profile, your CV, the CV copies sent with your applications, and your applications with their history and notes.

We may create statistics that do not identify any person, such as the number of views, sign-ups, or credits for a study or course.

We use these statistics only to operate, secure, and improve StudyLane and to provide aggregate reports to the research teams, departments, research pools, and university we work with. We do not sell or license them.

StudyLane uses cookies only to keep you signed in and secure. We do not use advertising or cross-site tracking cookies.

Your browser’s storage keeps a few settings on your device, such as directory filters and scroll position until you close the tab, and your session status so open tabs sign out together.

Vercel Web Analytics counts page views without cookies or cross-site tracking. StudyLane’s own study analytics record events such as study views and saves against a private random identifier, and researchers see only totals. If you delete your account, the link between you and that identifier is deleted.

Because we do not track you across sites or sell personal information, we do not change our behavior in response to Do Not Track or Global Privacy Control signals.

StudyLane sends emails about your use of the service:

• Account emails, such as sign-up confirmation and password reset;
• Booking confirmations, changes, cancellations, and appointment reminders;
• Screening results, approval codes, and survey reminders;
• Course-credit awards and outcomes;
• Invitations from research teams to studies you may take part in;
• Messages that research teams send to their participants through StudyLane;
• For research assistant applications: to students, interview invitations, offers, and not-selected decisions; to the lab admins and the member who posted the position, new applications, answers to offers, and withdrawals; and
• For researchers and administrators: listing reviews, study team invitations, and course reports.

Participants can also opt in to a paid-study digest, an email every two weeks listing new paid studies on StudyLane. It is off unless you turn it on, and every digest includes an unsubscribe link.

You can turn off reminders, credit emails, study invitations, and the digest in your account’s email preferences. Account, security, booking, and application emails cannot be turned off while you have an account. StudyLane does not send advertising or third-party marketing.

StudyLane keeps records as follows:

• Deleting your account removes your profile, sign-in, email preferences, saved studies, screening status, prescreen answers, research assistant applications and CVs, and session records. For researchers, studies you lead in a lab with other members move to another member of that lab; otherwise your paid studies are removed and your course-credit studies stay, without a lead, so the credit records attached to them remain valid;
• Prescreen answers to a course-credit pool’s questions are deleted at the end of each academic year, when the next fall quarter begins. Core prescreen answers are kept until you delete them on the Prescreen page or delete your account; your date of birth is kept until you delete your account or ask us to correct it;
• If you delete your account, your paid study bookings and attendance stay with the study for the research team, without your name or account. Bookings still to come are canceled;
• Two years after your last appointment in a paid study, your booking and attendance stay with the study in the same way, without your name, your account, or the level and programs saved when you booked;
• Records of payments a lab made through StudyLane (your name, UCLA UID or email, the amount, and the payment request) are kept for seven years, including after you delete your account, so the lab and the university can confirm payments and tax reporting;
• Participant ID codes (the random number a research team may see instead of your name) are kept until you delete your account, so research teams can handle withdrawals, audits, and follow-ups;
• Course-credit records (name, UCLA UID, course choices, sign-ups, and credit history) are kept after account deletion so instructors and the university can confirm credit that was already awarded. They are no longer linked to a StudyLane account. Two academic years after a quarter ends, the name and UCLA UID are removed from that quarter’s records, along with the level and programs saved with each sign-up;
• Study analytics events are deleted after 24 months. Until then they are tied to a random identifier that can no longer be linked to you after you delete your account;
• Records of the emails we send, such as confirmations, reminders, screening codes, study invitations, and notifications to researchers and administrators, are deleted 90 days after they are sent (or after the last try, for one that could not be delivered). For the paid-study digest, only the unsubscribe link’s record is kept, so older digests can still be unsubscribed from;
• A study invitation (the invited email address) is deleted 90 days after the research team withdraws it, or one year after the study ends or is deleted;
• Messages research teams send through StudyLane are deleted one year after the study closes or is deleted;
• Research assistant applications, with their history, lab notes, and CV copies, are deleted two years after the position stops taking applications (see section 7). Your application profile and CV are kept until you delete your account;
• Session activity records are deleted 30 days after their last activity, once you are signed out;
• Researcher access requests, including the UCLA UID, are deleted one year after they are declined, or one year after they are approved once the researcher’s account exists;
• Optional feedback given when deleting an account is stored without any account identifier; and
• Copies may remain in our database provider’s backups until those backups expire.

You can ask us to delete course-credit records sooner once your instructor no longer needs them. If StudyLane is used under a university agreement, retention of course-credit records will follow that agreement.

• Access: you can see your bookings, course choices, credit history, prescreen answers, and research assistant applications in StudyLane, or ask for a copy of your information;
• Correction: you can ask us to correct your name, UCLA UID, date of birth, or a credit record, update your other prescreen answers at any time, and change your password in your account settings;
• Deletion: you can delete your prescreen answers (except your date of birth) on the Prescreen page, delete your account from your account page, or ask us to delete information we hold about you, subject to section 11;
• Email choices: you can manage optional emails in your account’s email preferences or use the unsubscribe link in the paid-study digest; and
• Google Calendar: researchers can disconnect at any time (see section 18).

Send requests to support@studylane.org from the email address on your account. We may need to verify your identity before acting on a request.

Access to StudyLane data is restricted by role. Research teams can reach only their own studies, UCLA UIDs are limited to the student and authorized course-credit staff, and secrets for connected surveys and screeners are stored only as one-way hashes. Information travels over encrypted connections, and Google Calendar authorization tokens are encrypted.

No system is completely secure. Keep your password private and tell us at support@studylane.org if you think someone has accessed your account. If a security incident affects your information, we will notify you and any university we work with as required by law and by our agreements.

Studies may link to external screeners, surveys, consent forms, video-call links, lab websites, and university pages. StudyLane does not control those services. What you give them is governed by their own privacy policies and by the research team’s consent documents.

StudyLane is intended for UCLA students, staff and faculty, including students under 18, who use it in line with UCLA’s policies for students under 18. It is not directed to children, and we do not knowingly collect information from children under 13. If you believe a child has created an account, contact support@studylane.org and we will delete it.

Depending on how California law applies to StudyLane, California residents may have the right to know what personal information we collect, use, and disclose; to access, correct, or delete it; and to exercise these rights without discrimination.

StudyLane does not sell personal information or share it for cross-context behavioral advertising, and it uses sensitive information, such as your UCLA UID and account login, only to provide the service.

To make a request, email support@studylane.org. We may ask for information needed to verify your request.

We will post any changes on this page with a new effective date. If a change is material, we will tell users by email or in StudyLane before it takes effect. We will not use information already collected for a materially different purpose without your consent.

What You Connect and Why

Researchers can optionally connect a Google account to sync appointments from studies they own into a separate “StudyLane appointments” calendar. We request your Google account identifier and verified email address to identify the connection, and permission to create secondary calendars and manage events on calendars StudyLane creates. This connection does not request access to your existing personal calendars, Gmail, or Drive.

Information We Store and Share

We store your Google account identifier and email address, an encrypted authorization token for background syncing, calendar and event identifiers, and synchronization records such as event end times, update fingerprints, status, and errors. This information is processed by our hosting and database providers to operate and protect the connection. StudyLane does not receive your Google password.

Events sent to Google include the study title, visit number, assigned research staff names, time, location, booked-seat count, capacity, and a link to the StudyLane roster that requires sign-in and appropriate access. We do not send participant names, emails, UCLA UIDs, screening responses, or survey answers as event fields. The connection does not send participant invitations. You control who can see the calendar through Google Calendar’s sharing settings; anyone you share it with may see its event details.

Limits on Google Data Use

Google user data is used only to provide, maintain, troubleshoot, and secure this calendar connection. We do not sell it, use it for advertising or marketing, or use it to train artificial intelligence or machine-learning models. These restrictions also apply to aggregated, deidentified, or derived Google user data and override the broader use, disclosure, and retention provisions elsewhere in this policy.

Access by our personnel is limited to your specific permission for support, security investigations, or legal requirements. Transfers are limited to operating the connection with your authorization, security purposes, legal obligations, or a business transfer with your explicit prior consent.

StudyLane’s use and transfer of information received from Google APIs follows the Google API Services User Data Policy, including its Limited Use requirements, and the Google Workspace API user data policy.

Disconnecting and Deleting Data

Choose Disconnect under Google Calendar sync in StudyLane to stop syncing and remove the saved authorization token from our active database. We retain the connection’s account, calendar, and event identifiers and synchronization history so reconnecting can reuse the calendar. To request deletion of these remaining records, contact support@studylane.org. Residual copies may remain in backups until those backups expire; retained copies remain subject to the limits above.

You can also revoke StudyLane’s permission in your Google account’s third-party connections. Disconnecting or revoking access does not delete the calendar or events already stored in Google. You can delete those directly in Google Calendar. Your StudyLane bookings and credit records are separate from this optional connection.