Letter of Information for Potential Participants

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 4% of survey complete.
Dear potential participant,

The purpose of this study is to investigate the ways that lifestyle, health choices, and individual differences relate to a number of cognitive skills. Questions about lifestyle will include topics of personality, health and wellness, social life, stressful experiences, and substance use. This study is being conducted by Kristen Chafe and Dr. Kirsten Oinonen from the Health, Hormones, and Behaviour Lab in the Psychology Department of Lakehead University. The results of this study will be used in partial fulfillment of a PhD dissertation for Kristen Chafe. The data may also be used to examine other related research questions in the laboratory. Before deciding whether you want to participate, please read this letter carefully to understand what it entails. After reading the letter, feel free to ask any questions you may have.

ELIGIBILITY CRITERIA

To participate in the study, you must: (1) be aged 16+ (for LU students) or 18+ (for all other participants); (2) have no hearing or vision impairment that would prevent you from being able to read text on a screen or hear noises coming from computer speakers or headphones; (3) read and write English comfortably enough to understand and respond to questions typed on a computer screen; and (4) have not received a serious head injury (such as a concussion or a stroke) within the past 12 months.

WHAT KIND OF INFORMATION WILL BE COLLECTED, AND WHAT IS REQUESTED OF ME AS A PARTICIPANT?

The full study consists of two parts: Part 1 involves a series of questionnaires to be completed online (which takes approximately 45 minutes to 1.5 hours to complete) and Part 2 involves a cognitive test battery to be completed online (which takes approximately 1 to 1.5 hours to complete). You are welcome to complete the first part of the study only, or to complete both parts of the study, depending on your interest. You are about to begin Part 1, which contains questionnaires that ask about social activity, personality, health, health behaviours, stressful experiences, and other similar topics. If you are interested in continuing with Part 2 of the study, instructions for accessing the cognitive tests will be provided in your debriefing form.

WHAT ARE MY RIGHTS AS A PARTICIPANT?

Participation in this study is voluntary. This means that you may skip any questions that you do not wish to answer, and you may withdraw at any time without explanation and without penalty. Please note that researchers are unable to remove your data from the study after your responses have been submitted, as it will no longer be possible to identify which data belong to you. We will ask some questions to create an anonymous participant code that may be used to link data from the surveys to cognitive tests, if applicable. This code will be deleted once the data is linked.

WHAT ARE THE RISKS AND BENEFITS OF PARTICIPATION?

There are no known significant risks associated with participation in this study. However, you may feel some discomfort when reading or responding to questions of a personal nature (e.g., questions about stress, social relationships, and difficult childhood experiences). Additionally, some of our questionnaires will ask about the use of alcohol, cannabis, and nicotine. Therefore, if you are below the legal age to consume these substances, your responses may imply a history of illegal activity. The risk of this information being linked to any particular individual is minimal because anonymous codes will used instead of identifying information for all data storage and analysis.

Potential benefits of participating in this study include: self-insight, a sense of interest or satisfaction about contributing to health-related research, and learning about the research process.
WILL I RECEIVE COMPENSATION FOR PARTICIPATING?

For completion of Part 1, students in eligible Lakehead University Psychology courses will be awarded 1.5 bonus points towards their psychology undergraduate mark. All participants will have the opportunity to enter a draw to win a $50 Visa gift card at the end of the study. Withdrawing from the study at any point will not impact your ability to receive bonus points or your ability to enter into the draw.

If you complete Part 2 of the study, you will be eligible to receive an additional 1.5 Lakehead University bonus points towards your undergraduate mark, and/or enter into an additional $50 Visa gift card draw.

HOW WILL MY CONFIDENTIALITY BE MAINTAINED?

All records of your participation in Part 1 are anonymous and confidential, and reports or publications using this data will not include identifying information about any participant.

Please note that the online survey tool used in Part 1 of our study (Survey Monkey) is hosted by a server located in the USA. The US Patriot Act permits U.S. law enforcement officials, for the purpose of anti-terrorism investigation, to seek a court order that allows access to the personal records of any person without the person’s knowledge. In view of this we cannot absolutely guarantee full confidentiality and anonymity of your data. With your consent to participate in this study, you acknowledge this.

As per university requirements, data collected for research purposes will be kept for at least seven years by Dr. Oinonen at Lakehead University. This data will be securely stored in an anonymous and confidential manner on password-protected laboratory computers and/or an external hard drive within the Health, Hormones, and Behaviour Lab.

Upon completion of the study, anonymous data may be deposited in an online public repository/database to support the Tri-Agency research policy on open data. This database requires approval for access and allows other researchers to confirm the findings of scientific publications associated with the research study. You will also have the opportunity to indicate whether or not you consent to have your anonymous data included in a dataset that other researchers could request access to for future research projects. Neither database will contain any identifiable information about participants. Potential identifying information will not appear in any database, report, publication, or presentation resulting from the study.

If you have questions or concerns about the study, please contact Kristen Chafe or Dr. Kirsten Oinonen.

Participants are welcome to contact one of the researchers to indicate interest in obtaining a summary of the results. A summary of the findings will be available once the study has been completed (typically within 6 months to one year). Thank you very much for your interest and your time. We appreciate your support and contribution to our research in psychology.

This study has been approved by the Lakehead University Research Ethics Board. If you have any questions related to the ethics of the research and would like to speak to someone outside of the research team, please contact Sue Wright at the Research Ethics Board at 807-343-8283 or research@lakeheadu.ca.

Disclaimer: The research team will not share any personally identifiable information with anyone outside the study. All information collected during this study will remain confidential. However, the Research Ethics Board may review the study records to ensure compliance with the approved research ethics guidelines.
Researcher Contact Information
Graduate Student Researcher
Kristen Chafe, B.Sc., M.Sc., M.A.
Doctoral Student
Department of Psychology
Lakehead University
955 Oliver Road
Thunder Bay, ON P7B 5E1
kchafe1@lakeheadu.ca		 Faculty Researcher
Dr. Kirsten Oinonen, Ph.D., C.Psych.
Professor
Department of Psychology
Lakehead University
955 Oliver Road
Thunder Bay, ON P7B5E1
koinonen@lakeheadu.ca
(807) 343-8110 ext 8096

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