Implied Consent to Participate in a Research Study

A. PURPOSE AND BACKGROUND: The present research aimed at investigating your well-being and how it may fluctuate from day to day. The researcher, Ryan Howell, is a professor of psychology at San Francisco State University. You have been invited to participate in the study because you are an eligible adult and/or an undergraduate student at San Francisco State University. This study has been approved by the San Francisco State University Institutional Review Board.

B. PROCEDURES: If you agree to participate in this research study, the following will occur: Initially you will sign up. This study requires that you have a Facebook account. For each survey you will login using this account. By utilizing this account, it will simplify the login process for later surveys and will enable the researchers to link your survey results together. After clicking the Facebook login button below you will complete a pre-survey consisting of questions designed to provide demographic, personality, and well-being information. At the end of this survey, we will ask you to provide an email address that is best to reach you for each of your nightly surveys. It is important that you provide an email address that you regularly use. Subsequently, each nightly survey will be emailed to you. You will be asked to complete 14 nightly surveys. Each nightly survey is designed to measure your well-being, personality, and may ask you to complete a short task. The last part of the study will ask you to complete an exit survey. At the end of this study you will be debriefed.

C. RISKS: This study creates a minimal risk of loss of privacy. Privacy will be protected by keeping all data on an encrypted computer and by not using names to label data. The researcher and his graduate students will be the only people with access to the data. Your login information and email address will be unknown to the researchers, and your privacy will be carefully guarded. There is also a risk that you may feel discomfort due to either the study procedure or the nature of the questionnaires; however, you are welcome to leave any question(s) unanswered and may decide to end your participation at any time. In addition, if you experience any distress after the study is completed, the San Francisco State University Counseling and Psychological Services Center can be reached at (415) 338-2208; the center is open Monday through Thursday, 8AM to 12PM and 1PM to 7PM, and Friday 8AM to 12PM and 1PM to 5PM. Students are offered free psychological counseling in Room 208 of the Student Services Building.

D. CONFIDENTIALITY: All of your login information and survey responses will be anonymous. The research data will be kept in a secure server, used only for research purposes, and only the researchers will have access to the data. At the conclusion of the study, all identifying information will be removed from the data.

E. DIRECT BENEFITS: There will be no direct benefits to you for participating in this research study.

F. COSTS: There will be no cost to you for participating in this research.

G. COMPENSATION: While there is no direct compensation by participating in this research we will provide you daily feedback about how your personality fluctuates across time.

H. ACADEMIC CREDIT: For SFSU students: you may earn extra credit for participation in this research, depending on your instructor. If your instructor does provide extra credit, then he or she will also offer alternative forms of extra credit that do not require research participation.

I. ALTERNATIVES: The alternative is not to participate in the research.

J. QUESTIONS: Thank you for helping with this study. Your participation is greatly appreciated. Please do not discuss or describe this experiment to anyone until the semester is over. If you have any further questions about this study, you can contact Dr. Ryan Howell at [email protected]. Questions about your rights as a study participant, or comments or complaints about the study, may also be addressed to the Office for the Protection of Human Subjects at 415: 338-1093 or [email protected]. PARTICIPATION IN THIS RESEARCH IS VOLUNTARY. You are free to decline to participate in this research study, or to withdraw your participation at any point, without penalty. Your decision whether or not to participate in this research study will have no influence on your present or future status at San Francisco State University.If you have questions about your participation or the present research study, please contact the researchers.

By clicking the Facebook login button below, you are indicating your consent to participate in this research.






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