TITLE OF RESEARCH STUDY: BEHAVIOR IN GROUPS 

You are invited to participate in a voluntary research study. Please read this form carefully. The form describes the purpose of the study and any risks and benefits of your participation. Make sure you contact the research team if there is anything in this form that you do not understand, or if you have any questions or concerns. You may reach them at groupbehaviorstudy@gmail.com. Once you’ve read the form, review the response options at the bottom of the form and check off each part of the study that you agree to.

This study has been reviewed by a University Institutional Review Board on April 12th, 2024.

Summary

This study aims to investigate the way that people interact with each other, connect with each other, and behave as a group. If you agree to participate, you will be asked to complete 8 anonymous surveys. The surveys include: 1 survey that will ask you general questions such as questions about your age and country you live in, 1 survey about your impression of certain groups, 4 surveys about your satisfaction/comfort/dedication to people around you, 1 survey about your impression of males and females, and 1 survey about your dating and sexual experiences.

Research tells us that the people around us can influence us in positive and negative ways. In settings such as fraternities, sports teams, and other special interest groups, people often spend a lot of time with their group members, suggesting good social interactions may be important to them. You have been invited to take part in this study because you visited a Reddit page related to topics such as sports, fraternities, universities, dating, or friendships. We are looking for participants who are male, 16 years old or older, understand English, and live in North America. We are aiming for about 500 people to take part in this study.

Your right to withdraw/discontinue:

You are free to discontinue your participation at any time over the course of your survey completion. You may also skip any survey questions that make you feel uncomfortable. If you withdraw from the research project at any time before pressing the final submit button, any data that you have contributed will be removed from the study. You do not need to indicate a reason for your withdrawal. Please note that you cannot withdraw from the study after you press the final submit button.

Potential Benefits:

The findings may have beneficial implications for the research community and the general public. You will not directly benefit from participating in the study.

Time commitment:

On average, participants complete the study in approximately 40 minutes.

Confidentiality:

You will not be asked to provide your name at any point in this study. We will be asking for general demographic data (e.g., age, sexual orientation), which will be aggregated (not individually presented) in an effort to protect your anonymity. All data from this study will be kept from inappropriate disclosure. Data collected will be stored on a password protected computer. The researchers are not interested in anyone’s individual responses, only the average responses of everyone in the study.

Potential Risk or Discomforts:

As you complete the materials involved in this study, you may feel uncomfortable revealing your experiences or find it upsetting to answer some questions if you have had negative experiences due to any of the behaviors mentioned within this study. If so, please know you can stop the study at any time, select “prefer not to answer”, or contact the Crisis Text Line, which operates in both the US and Canada: https://www.crisistextline.org/.

Researcher Contact Information

This research study is being conducted at a North American university. If you have questions or concerns about your participation in this study, you may contact the researchers at groupbehaviorstudy@gmail.com. If you choose to contact the researchers, please do not send personal sensitive information, as communication via email is not absolutely secure.

Incentive for Participation:

At the end of the study, to thank you for your participation, you will have the option to be entered into a draw to win an electronic $50 Amazon gift card, sent to you via email. Once you complete the questionnaires and click the option to submit them, you will be given a link that will take you to the draw. If you choose to participate in the draw, you will be asked to provide an email address, so that we can send the electronic gift card to this address. Please note that the link for the draw is completely separate from the link that contains the questionnaires. Therefore, the researchers have no way of connecting the email address you provide to the answers to the questionnaires. All they will know is that a particular email address was provided by someone who participated in the study. 

Please note that you are not required to enter the email that you typically use or add any information in your email account that correctly identifies you. If you choose to, you may create a new email account for the purpose of receiving the gift card. You may also opt out of entering the draw.

Also, although you must complete the surveys in order to be entered into the draw, you do have the option to select “prefer not to answer” to any question you do not want to answer.

You will only be entered into the draw once, and you will not be entered if it is found that you completed the study more than once in order to attain additional entries.

Results of the study:

If you are interested in learning about the outcome of the study, please email the researchers. You will, then, be provided with a summary of the general trends that were found in the study (e.g., what the average score was for the surveys you filled out).

Use and Storage of Data:

The information you provide will be stored indefinitely on password-protected computers, on Lime Survey (i.e., the survey platform facilitating data collection), and the University’s secure cloud storage (i.e., Google Drive, G Suite)

This information will only be available to the research team and their assistants, as required by the ethics and publication guidelines of psychology. Please note, this means that raw and aggregate data may be shared with other researchers as is standard practice in psychology. If data is shared, the research team cannot ensure that data will not be published or disseminated in its raw or aggregate form, as once shared what researchers do with this data is outside of the research team’s control.

All information collected during this study, including your personal information, will be kept confidential and not shared with anyone outside the study unless required by law. By personal information, we refer to general demographic information and anything you write in response to open-ended questions, that we did not specifically ask for.

You will not be named in any reports, publications, or presentations that may come from this study. You will be asked to provide general demographic information about yourself (e.g., age, sexual orientation), but none of this will allow others to identify you. We will not be asking for your name. Only group results will be reported to protect the confidentiality of your responses further.

There is also the possibility that this data will be used for other projects. If the data was used for other projects, the research team will submit a separate application form to the board of ethics for the secondary use of this data.