​​The Exploring Psychobiological Research Onboarding Conditions study was designed to explore how effective chatbots are at onboarding research participants in comparison to human research assistants. The study examined whether chatbot assisted onboarding can help improve participant confidence and comprehension during studies involving biological sample collection.

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 Participation involved an onboarding session with either a chatbot or a researcher online or in person. Participants should not have participated in research using biological sampling before including blood, stool, saliva, hair or urine. After completing either human or chatbot onboarding, participant's completed a short Qualtrics survey about their comfort, understanding and confidence in completing sampling.  The research was carried out by BA Psychology and Computing  research dissertation students and was supervised by Samantha Dockray and Sabin Tabirca ( School of Computer Science, UCC). 

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This project 'Onbotting' was awarded third place for the AxisBic entrepreneurship award. The awards recognise technical excellence and the  commercial potential and real-world impact of student-led innovations.  Congratulations to the project team of Andrea Marshall, Saoirse O'Donovan, Lily Mc Donnell, and Dylan O'Toole! 

 

The project completed in Spring 2026.