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Justice-Involved Veterans, Veterans Justice Outreach, and Recidivism

4.Consent Form

You are invited to take part in a research study about military veterans who have received treatment through the VA’s Veterans Justice Outreach program.  The researcher is inviting military veterans who have successfully completed the Veterans Justice Outreach treatment program and have been discharged from the program for at least six months to participate in the study. This form is part of a process called “informed consent” to allow you to understand this study before deciding whether to take part.

This study is being conducted by a researcher named Melody Weathers who is a doctoral student at Walden University.

Background Information:

The purpose of this study is to see if those who have received treatment from the VA’s Veterans Justice Outreach program are more or less likely to commit a crime that would result in legal involvement following their treatment.  This study will also see if military veterans who have been diagnosed with posttraumatic stress disorder, a traumatic brain injury, a psychological diagnosis, and/or an alcohol or substance use disorder are more or less likely to commit a crime that would result in legal involvement following treatment from this program.

Procedures:

This study involves the following steps:

·        Complete an anonymous online survey which will take approximately 15 minutes.

·        Participants will be asked to answer 5 demographic questions

·        Participants will be asked whether they have been diagnosed by the VA with any of the following: a psychological disorder, an alcohol or substance use disorder, posttraumatic stress disorder, and/or a traumatic brain injury.

·        Participants will be asked to complete a 9-question open ended survey.

Here are some sample survey questions:

Item: Have you had legal involvement since completing the Veterans Justice Outreach program?

Response: “yes” or “no”

Item: Have you been diagnosed with a traumatic brain injury by the VA?

Response: “yes” or “no”

Item: How did you enroll in the Veterans Justice Outreach program?

Response: open response

Item: Which parts of the Veterans Justice Outreach program were beneficial? Explain.

Response: open response


Voluntary Nature of the Study:

Research should only be done with those who freely volunteer so, everyone involved will respect your decision to join or not. If you decide to join the study now, you can still change your mind up until you submit the survey. You may stop at any time.  However, after you submit the survey, I cannot remove your responses because I will not know which responses came from you. The researcher seeks between three to five volunteers for this study.


Risks and Benefits of Being in the Study:

Being in this study could involve some risk of the minor discomforts that can be encountered in daily life as some survey questions may be personal in nature and may make you feel uncomfortable.  With the protections in place, this study would pose minimal risk to your wellbeing.

If at any point you feel uncomfortable you can withdraw from the survey and contact the

Veterans Crisis Line at 1-800-273-8255 and Press 1 or Text 838255 or you can chat online at Veterans Crisis Line: Suicide Prevention Hotline, Text & Chat  
1.This study offers no direct benefits to individual volunteers. The aim of this study is to benefit society by adding to the general knowledge regarding the relationship between the Veterans Justice Outreach program, the veterans who complete the treatment program, and risk of legal involvement.  This research has the potential to benefit veterans involved in the criminal justice system who qualify for such a treatment program rather than being incarcerated. The Veterans Justice Outreach program’s goal is to reduce the risk of legal involvement and end association with the justice system.  This study will determine if this treatment program is meeting its goal.  Your participation may help me to learn more about this topic as well as determine how to benefit others in the future benefit others in the future.

Payment:

You will not be paid for being in this study.

What will happen with the information collected for this study?

The survey is anonymous, and no one will be able to link your responses back to you.  Your responses to the survey will not be linked to your computer, email address or other electronic identifiers. 

At the completion of this dissertation the information collected will be published on the ProQuest database as per the criteria for graduation at Walden University.

Privacy:

The researcher is required to protect your privacy. Your identity will be kept anonymous, within the limits of the law. The researcher will not ask for your name at any time or link your responses to your contact information.  The researcher will not use your personal information for any purposes outside of this research project. Also, the researcher will not include your name or anything else that could identify you in the study reports. If the researcher were to share this dataset with another researcher in the future, the researcher is required to remove all names and identifying details before sharing; this would not involve another round of obtaining informed consent. Data will be kept secure by a SurveyMonkey account for the data collection process until it is exported for data analysis purposes.  To access the data from the SurveyMonkey account a username and password is required.  Additionally, the computer that will store and access the data utilizes facial recognition software and is password protected.  All electronic files will be backed up on a password protected cloud drive.  Data will be kept for a period of at least 5 years, as required by the university.

Contacts and Questions:

You can ask questions of the researcher by emailing her at melody.weathers@waldenu.edu.  If you want to talk privately about your rights as a participant or any negative parts of the study, you can call Walden University’s Research Participant Advocate at 612-312-1210.  Walden University’s approval number for this study is 08-13-21-0222221 and it expires on Aug 12, 2022.

Statement of Consent

I have read this form, been given the chance to ask questions and have my questions answered.  If I have more questions, I have been told who to contact.  By clicking the “I Agree” button below, I am agreeing to be in this study.  I can print or save a copy of this consent information for future reference.  If I do not want to be in this study, I can close my internet browser.(Required.)