Invitation to Participate
Title of Research:
COVID-19 Interpersonal Coping Diary Study
Name of Researcher(s):
Karen L. Blair, PhD St. Francis Xavier University
Debby Herbenick, PhD, Indiana University
Kathryn M. Bell, PhD & Diane Holmberg, PhD - Acadia University
Invitation to Participate
You are being invited to participate in an online survey about your experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic. Researchers do research to answer important questions that might help change or improve the way we do things in the future.
This form will give you information about the study and help you to decide whether you want to participate.
What is the purpose of this research?
The purpose of this research is to better understand how individuals are coping during the COVID-19 pandemic. We are interested in learning about how you are spending your days, how you are feeling, who you are communicating with, what you think of the overall situation, and what actions/behaviours you are engaging in as a result of the pandemic.
What is involved in participating in this study? How long will it take?
The first part of this study involves completing a 30-40 minute online survey about your general well-being, demographics, and responses to the COVID-19 pandemic.
At the end of this survey, you’ll be asked if you would like to opt-in to a series of follow-up surveys daily. We call this a “daily diary” study because it is like keeping a daily journal.
If you opt-in, you’ll provide an email address (which can be an anonymous email address) and we will send you a link each night to a new survey that will take you 5-10 minutes to complete. You’ll have the option to participate in the daily diary study for 2 or 4 weeks, although you may, of course, quit the study at any time simply by no longer following the links sent to you through email. Every 7 days you’ll complete a slightly longer end-of-day survey that might take up to 20 minutes to complete, depending on how you answer various questions. On the 14th daily diary, you’ll be asked if you want to finish the study or continue for another two weeks. We’d love to hear from you every day, but you are free to skip any of the surveys or stop responding at any time. You may also choose to switch to completing surveys only every 7 days at any point by clicking the “Delete My Data or Switch to 7 Day Surveys” at the bottom of the survey at any time.
Can I Be Reminded by Text-Message?
Yes. If you so choose, you may also receive SMS (text message) reminders to complete the surveys. To do so, you’ll need to provide your mobile phone number. Your number will only be used for the purpose of sending you reminders each night to complete your survey. The reminders will include a link to take you right to the survey, which you can complete on your phone if you so choose. To end the reminders at any time, simply reply STOP to one of the messages. At the end of the study, or when you withdraw from the study, your phone number will immediately be deleted from our records.
Will I be compensated for my time in any way?
Yes! You will be entered into a series of prize draws.
- For each survey that you complete, you will be entered into the grand prize draw to win one of 6 $150 (USD value – available in CND, GBP or USD) gift card to Amazon.
- For example, if you complete just the intake survey, you’ll get one entry into this draw.
- If you complete the entry survey and 7 daily diary surveys, you’ll be entered into the draw 8 times.
- Every week we will do a drawing to win one of 5 $20 (USD value – available in GBP, CND or USD) Amazon gift card. Participants residing in Nova Scotia will be entered to win additional weekly prize draws.
- You’ll be entered into this draw once for each survey you have completed at the time of the drawing, continuing until the study is completed.
- You’ll be re-entered into each weekly draw until the end of the study, even if you’ve completed your participation already.
- For each survey that you complete, you will be entered into an additional draw to win a 6 night, 7 day stay at Lake Louise Inn in Lake Louise, Alberta, Canada (located in Banff National Park, Lake Louise is in the Rocky Mountains and one of Canada's most beautiful tourist destinations. The voucher will be valid until the end of 2022. This prize was donated to the study by Shelter Canadian Properties Limited.
Is my participation voluntary?
You may choose not to take part in the study or may choose to leave the study at any time. Your participation is entirely voluntary.
Deciding not to participate, or deciding to leave the study later, will not result in any loss of penalty or loss of benefits.
You may withdraw from the study at any time. To do so, you may simply close your browser and stop replying to the surveys that are sent to you through email. You may also reply to any of the emails sent and indicate that you wish to stop participating, in which case we will make sure you do not receive any more reminders about the study.
If you would like to withdraw (delete) your data entirely, you may do so by clicking the “delete my data” link at the bottom of the survey or by replying to any of the email reminders and letting us know that you’d like us to delete your data. If you wish to withdraw your data after survey completion, send us your session ID ( 1715910725_6646b84579ab65.66721408 ) and we will remove your data, as long as it is still possible to do so. If any data you provide has already been used in analyses, reports, presentations, or papers in a de-identified form, it will no longer be possible to remove your data.
If you quit the study by closing your browser, then the data you’ve provided up to that point may still be used for analysis unless you request that we delete your data.
What are the potential benefits associated with participation in the study?
The benefits of participation in the study that are reasonable to expect are that you may find it helpful to think about how you are coping with the pandemic. At the end of the study, you will be able to print off an automatically generated summary of your daily diary responses to keep for your own records. Within the survey, you will be given the option to view this summary or to not view the summary, so it is entirely up to you whether you would like to review your experiences or not. There are no other expected benefits to participating in this study.
As researchers, we hope to learn things that will help scientists, educators, healthcare providers, and people around the world figure out how to cope during particularly difficult times.
What are the potential risks of participating in this study?
The potential risks of participating in this research are that you may feel uncomfortable, sad, or anxious answering some of the questions. However, we expect that these feelings will not be any more than usual under the present circumstances. Your consent to participate in this study does not entail waiving any rights that you have legal recourse in the event of research-related harm.
Will Anyone Know What I Said? (Confidentiality)
If you only participate in the first part of the study (single survey), you may do so anonymously, as we will not gather your name, email address or any other identifying information. At the end of the survey, you will be forwarded to the prize draw entry page, where we will ask for an email address. Your email address will not in any way be connectable to the survey answers you provided. If you complete the survey using employer-owned equipment, your employer may have a legal right to any information sent using employer-owned equipment.
If you opt to participate in the daily diary study, we will need an email address to send the reminders to each night. This email address can be an anonymous email address if you wish to protect your identity. You may also opt to provide your mobile phone number to receive reminders. This number will be deleted from your survey data and will only be used for the purpose of sending survey reminders.
Your daily diary responses will be connected to your initial survey response by returning you to a later page in the survey each day as you progress through the study.
Your responses to questions about conflict with an intimate partner could be self-incriminating and harmful to you if they became known outside the study. We do not intend to disclose this information and your identity will be protected by the full extent allowed by the law. There are certain circumstances that cannot be kept confidential and must be reported to law enforcement, emergency mental health services or protection agencies. These circumstances include (1.) if you are in imminent danger to yourself or someone else; (2.) if you report knowledge of current child or elder abuse; or (3.) if your records are subpoenaed by a court of law. Within the extent of the law your participation in this project, as well as your responses during the study, will be kept strictly confidential.
Where will my data be stored and used?
The questionnaire stores its data on Survey Gizmo’s servers, which are in Montreal, QC, Canada. The data will be stored on a secure server and only downloaded onto password-protected computers and hard drives belonging to our research lab.
All data will be analyzed as a group and presented in such a way that you are not individually identifiable. As soon as the study is completed, we will de-identify all of the data, meaning that if you provided an email address or phone number, we will remove this information from our data set.
Release of Data
All data will be analyzed as a group. If we make use of individual quotations, you will not be identified in any way and we will alter quotations if necessary, in order to protect your identity.
Contact Information
If you have any questions, you may contact the following researchers:
Dr. Karen L. Blair, St. Francis Xavier University –
kblair@stfx.ca , 1.902.867.5956
Dr. Kathrn M. Bell, Acadia University - kathryn.bell@acadiau.ca, 1.902.585.1408
Dr. Diane Holmberg, Acadia University - diane.holmberg@acadiau.ca
Dr. Debby L. Herbenick, Indiana University --
debby@indiana.edu
This project has been reviewed and approved by the Research Ethics Boards at St. Francis Xavier University, Acadia University, and Indiana University. If you have any questions or concerns about the ethics of this research, you may contact Stephen Maitzen, Chair of Research Ethics Board (REB), (902)-585-1407, smaitzen@acadiau.ca