Information statement

Project Title: Herbal medicines as complementary treatments for depression. What is YOUR view?

Chief Investigator:	Supervisor:
Ms Lindsay McFarlane	Dr Erica McIntyre
BSocSci (Psych) Hons Candidate	School of Psychology
School of Psychology	Charles Sturt University
Charles Sturt University	Bathurst, NSW, Australia
Bathurst, NSW, Australia	P: 0438 448 653
E: lindsaymcfarlane1@gmail.com	E: emcintyre@csu.edu.au

You are invited to participate in a study exploring psychologists’ complimentary medicine beliefs, attitudes towards herbal medicine, and practice behaviors related to these medicines. The study is important because depression is a significant mental health problem in Australia, and Australians are high users of herbal medicines. The purpose of the current study is therefore, to better understand psychologists’ practice behaviours towards the use of herbal medicines for the treatment of depressive symptoms. This study is one of the requirements for completing the Bachelor of Social Science (Psychology) (Honours) at Charles Sturt University.

Eligibility for study
Participation is open to all AHPRA registered psychologists and provisional psychologists who are aged over 18, and are able to read and understand English.

Procedure
Participation should take no longer than 15 minutes and involves completing an online survey where you will answer questions exploring your complimentary medicine beliefs, your attitudes towards herbal medicine, your practice behaviors related to these medicines, and your knowledge of herbal medicines.

You will also be asked some brief demographic questions about your age, gender, employment status, residence, geographical area of psychological practice, herbal medicine training, and herbal medicine use.

There is no payment or reward for participating in this study.

Participation is anonymous and entirely voluntary. Whether or not you decide to participate is your decision and will not disadvantage you. If you do decide to participate, you may withdraw yourself and your data from the project at any time (prior to submitting your data at the end of your participation), without reason or consequence. The anonymous nature of participation means that you will not be able to withdraw your data once it has been submitted at the end of the survey.

Use of the survey data
The data collected will be used within Ms Lindsay McFarlane’s Honours thesis, and may also be presented at academic conferences or published in peer-reviewed journals.

Confidentiality and volunteer information

Your confidentiality is assured as your data will be stored without reference to your name or other identifying information on password protected drives. 

Following your completion of the study, all raw data will be collected by Survey Monkey and will be securely stored online. Once collected, the data will be uploaded to secure password protected cloud storage by the investigators. The data will be stored on password protected equipment, backed up on password protected hard drives, and will contain no identifying information. When the project is complete the data will be stored on a CSU hard drive that can only be accessed by the two investigators on the project.

Should the findings of the study be published, summary data (allowing the reported findings to be verified) will be archived and indexed at Research Data Australia.  No individual participant will be identified in, or could be identified from, any published report or published dataset from this study.

Consent
By progressing beyond this information statement you are indicating your informed consent to participate in this study. You may withdraw from the study at any time by closing your browser window.

More information
If you wish to ask any questions prior to participating, or to be sent a copy of this information statement, please contact either of the named researchers above. You can access the final results of the study by contacting either researcher directly after October 9th 2017.

Ethics Approval
The Charles Sturt University Human Research Ethics Committee has approved this project. If you have any complaints or reservations about the ethical conduct of this project you may contact the Committee through the Executive Officer:

The Executive Officer Human Research Ethics Committee
Office of Academic Governance 
Charles Sturt University
Panorama Avenue Bathurst NSW 2795
Tel: (02) 6338 4628
Email: ethics@csu.edu.au

Any issues you raise will be treated in confidence and investigated fully and you will be informed of the outcome.

Please click on the NEXT button if you consent to participating in this study.

Approval Number: H17057
Expiration Date: 31 December 2017

6% of survey complete.

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