The researchers are looking to investigate the impact of Gay-Straight Alliances (GSAs) on university campuses and their psychological effect on LGBTQ+ young adults. Participant requirements for the present study are that participants are to be 19+, identify as LGBTQ+ and are currently attending a Canadian university.
As a participant, you will be asked to dedicate between 45 minutes to an hour of your time to complete an online questionnaire. This questionnaire will inquire about your personal experience with GSAs along with a variety of measures that will assess your psychological well-being and experiences unique to your LGBTQ+ identity. Please note that the psychological measures used in the study will not be used as diagnostic instruments by the research team.
Due to the nature of some of the measures, you may feel uncomfortable or distressed by the subject matter. Subject matter that may be triggering in the study includes questions regarding sexual assault, LGBTQ+ discrimination/victimization, posttraumatic stress, suicide, and internalized homophobia. The research team has comprised a list of resources that are both general and LGBTQ+ specific for each province on the last page of this document for you to access should you feel the need to seek support after participating in the survey. If a question in the survey causes too much discomfort or distress, participants are welcome to refrain from responding to it, and either continue with the survey or withdraw participation. Participation in the study can be withdrawn any time prior to submitting the survey by exiting the browser that the survey is opened on. Additionally, the research team would also like to remind participants to refrain from disclosing any information that may identify the participant either directly or indirectly to the researchers, and that they are under no obligation to share information they feel uncomfortable disclosing.
SurveyMonkey, the platform that this study is hosted on, allows participants to skip or leave questions unanswered. Answers that participants select may be changed at any point in time before the survey’s completion. Further, participants may navigate through the survey to modify answers from the previous pages until they have selected to submit the survey. You may withdraw from the study at any time prior to submitting the survey, at which time it will be impossible to remove the data, as the participation is anonymous. To withdraw consent, you will need to navigate back to this consent form using the “previous” button located at the bottom of the pages of the survey and change your response to “no”. Please note if you do not select “no” on the form to withdraw consent, your partial responses may be used as a part of the data analysis.
Your responses to this survey will be stored in SurveyMonkey’s database. Please be advised that SurveyMonkey's servers are located in the United States and are therefore subject to the U.S. Patriot Act (https://www.congress.gov/bill/107th-congress/house-bill/3162). Data will then be inputted onto SPSS in order to be analyzed and saved on a secured drive that is only accessible to the principal investigator and the research team. Data input will be conducted by the principal investigator and overseen by the supervisor. Consent forms and data collected for the purposes of this study will be kept on the locked drive for the duration of the project, and then deleted from both SurveyMonkey and the drive after the project’s completion. This project’s aimed completion is March 2023. For more information regarding SurveyMonkey’s policies on privacy and security, follow the links provided:
https://www.surveymonkey.com/mp/legal/security/
https://www.surveymonkey.com/mp/legal/privacy-policy/
