Online Screening Consent |
Workplace Coping Strategies
Information Page
Please take the time to carefully read the following information. If any information is unclear, please email the primary researcher at nichole.faller@uregina.ca for clarification. You may also phone 306-337-3331.
Purpose of the Screening: The purpose of the screening is to assess your present concerns and determine whether you are eligible for the Workplace Coping Strategies course.
Overview of the Psychoeducation Course: This online psychoeducation course is designed to provide education on workplace accommodations to employees with symptoms of depression and/or anxiety. Specifically, the course provides information on depression and anxiety within the workplace, possible accommodations available to employees, strategies for requesting an accommodation, and future management of symptoms and workplace relationships with or without an accommodation. This is a short-term course that consists of 4 lessons and will require participants to review the materials presented online over a four-week period. Participants may complete the course at their own pace. Please note, after completion of a lesson participants will gain access to the next lesson on the following day. All participants who agree to take part in this study will be asked to complete brief questionnaires before, during, and after participating in the course and this information will be used to evaluate the course overall. Each lesson will take approximately 45 minutes of the participants’ time. The screening and subsequent questionnaires will take approximately 30 minutes to complete.
Overview of Study:
Project Title: A Randomized Controlled Trial of an Online Psychoeducation Course for Improving Knowledge and Access to Workplace Mental Health Accommodations
The purpose of this study is to advance knowledge and utilization of workplace accommodations for depression/anxiety symptoms within organizations. This will be accomplished by exploring the impact of this psycho-education course on requesting and/or receiving an accommodation, participants’ comfort levels for requesting an accommodation, accommodation outcomes (e.g., absenteeism rates), comfort level disclosing a mental health concern within the workplace, organizational inclusion measures, and barrier/facilitators to requesting/receiving an accommodation. We are also interested in receiving feedback from participants about the course structure and content, so it may be improved for future use.
Format of the Screening
Pre-Online Screening: Once you consent to the screening, you will be asked some basic eligibility questions. If you are not eligible for the Workplace Coping Strategies course, the Online Screening will terminate, and you will be given information about why you are not eligible. You may contact the primary researcher to discuss your eligibility further if you wish. This first part of the Online Screening will likely take 5 minutes.
Full Online Screening: If you meet basic eligibility for the Workplace Coping Strategies course you will be asked to provide basic personal information such as name, address, telephone number, and email address before continuing. Since, employers may have access to emails sent from your work email it is recommended that a personal email be provided. This information is necessary for the primary researcher to contact you to discuss the results of the Online Screening. In the screening, you will be presented with questions asking about your background, symptoms of anxiety and depression, other mental health concerns, occupation, work performance, workplace relationships, and self-efficacy. You will also be asked some questions about your perceptions of how inclusive your workplace and/or supervisor is. We anticipate that this Online Screening will take approximately 15-35 minutes to complete, depending on the responses you provide.
Telephone Screening: Following the completion of the Online Screening, you will be asked to pick a day and time using Coconut Calendar for a telephone call with the primary researcher. The primary researcher will contact you by phone to discuss the results of the Online Screening with you and let you know if you are eligible for Workplace Coping Strategies course. It typically takes us 2 to 3 business days to arrange this phone call. We anticipate that this Telephone Screening will likely take 20 minutes to complete, depending on the responses you provide. The primary researcher may ask you some brief clarifying questions if more information is needed regarding your responses to the Online Screening. You may also use this time to ask any questions you may have. Please note: The Workplace Coping Strategies course is not for everyone. Participation in the Online Screening does not guarantee participation in the Workplace Coping Strategies course. There is also a wait-list control group, so if you are eligible for the Workplace Coping Strategies course you may need to wait 8 weeks before the course will become available to you.
Voluntary Participation & Ability to Withdraw:
Participation in the screening is entirely voluntary. Should you choose not to participate, or if you wish to stop the screening at any time after starting, you may do so without any consequences to you. However, once the data has been pooled for analysis (Spring/Summer 2020) after the course has been completed, withdrawal from the study will no longer be possible. The information you have provided will be retained by researchers.
Limits of Confidentiality:
The responses you provide are confidential although there are certain limits to confidentiality that every participant must be aware of:
- If you pose an immediate threat to your life, or another individual’s life, confidentiality may be broken in order to prevent harm
- If you disclose information suggesting that any child is at risk of abuse, the appropriate authorities will have to be notified
- If you become involved in a legal case, the judge has the right to subpoena any information relevant to the legal problem
- There are unique risks that may compromise your privacy that exist with any Internet-based service. A description of these risks follows:
- Any computer connected to the Internet will store information about visited websites on the Internet in the browser’s history list and the browser’s cache. The responses to the questionnaires are only temporarily stored on your computer until you close down your browser window. In other words, after you complete and submit your responses, your computer will discard this information, although some of this information may remain in your browser’s cache. You may delete this information by clearing your history list and browser’s cache.
- After you complete the Online Screening, the information you provide will be sent directly to the survey software website over a secure connection. The information will then be encrypted and securely stored in the database at which point it is only accessible by the primary researcher, their academic supervisor, and the Online Therapy Unit coordinator.
Methods Used to Protect Your Information:
The Online Therapy Unit has taken precautions to protect the security of your information. Both the University of Regina server and Qualtrics.com servers are protected with generally available security technologies, including firewalls and data encryption. In addition, information transmitted from your machine to the server is encrypted using secure socket layer technology (SSL).
In addition to these security precautions, it is important for all users of internet-delivered services to take additional security precautions when submitting sensitive information electronically to ensure the safety of their information.
There are various things that you can do to protect your information:
1. Use your home computer instead of a computer in a shared space, such as a library or office.
2. When you leave your computer or are done working with the web application ensure you have exited the Online Screening.
3. Since your Internet browser stores information in its memory, or disk cache, you can clean the cache after you use the computer. Certain browsers have "Privacy" modes that can be enabled. Once in this mode, the user's interactions are not saved to browser history and no data is stored in browser cache. Once the browser is closed or this mode is exited, there are no browser records of any of the interactions that occurred while in the "Privacy" mode. Firefox has this feature, and is, therefore, highly recommended when completing the Online Screening. Browsers that do not have this mode, or users that do not use this feature, must manually purge their browser history and cache to prevent others from seeing their web interactions.
4. Enable either the firewall software that came with your operating system (e.g. Windows firewall), or install a reputable 3rd party software, such as ZoneAlarm. Firewalls protect your computer and information from network attacks and threats.
5. Use anti-virus software to both prevent and recover from virus programs. While most anti-virus software is for purchase, there are free software options available to download. However, one must still be cautious in order to avoid downloading and installing malicious software that appears to be legitimate.
6. Malware-detection software (such as Spybot: Search and Destroy, Microsoft Security Essentials) can be used to scan your computer for software and files that may be leaking your personal information to 3rd parties.
Use of Information Collected through the Screening:
Information gathered through the screening will be used for three purposes.
1. To determine eligibility for participation in the Workplace Coping Strategies course:
- If in the process of the follow-up telephone discussion of your online screening with the primary researcher it is determined that participation in the Workplace Coping Strategies course would be appropriate, your screening will become part of your file. This file will be de-identified and information may be used for research purposes only.
2. To be used in de-identified form (identifying information removed) by researchers to evaluate the Online Screening and Workplace Coping Strategies course and to help guide the development of future screening tools and courses offered. Any publications stemming from the evaluation of this information will examine all respondents as a whole and you will not be personally identified.
Storage of Online Screening Information:
1. Your responses to the online screening will be collected by Qualtrics and then stored on their secure server until we retrieve this information. This server is located in Canada and information on that server is covered by the Canadian Privacy Act.
2. Responses from the online screening will be retrieved from Qualtrics periodically by the primary researcher and will be stored on the Online Therapy Unit’s secure server, located at the University of Regina.
3. All information (whether paper or online) is kept securely at the University of Regina for a period of seven years, which is consistent with standards of professional practice for psychologists in the province of Saskatchewan.
Ethics Approval:
Project Title: A Randomized Controlled Trial of an Online Psychoeducation Course for Improving Knowledge and Access to Workplace Mental Health Accommodations
The project has been approved on ethical grounds by the Research Ethics Board (REB) of the University of Regina. Any questions regarding your rights as participant may be addressed to that committee through the University of Regina REB at 306-585-4775 or email: research.ethics@uregina.ca. Out of town participants may call collect.
Online Therapy Unit
Department of Psychology
University of Regina
Regina, SK S4S 0A2
Ph: 306-337-3331
Technical Questions: If you have any technical difficulty with the screening, contact the primary researcher at 306-337-3331. You can also email the primary researcher at nichole.faller@uregina.ca.
We recommend that you download a copy of this consent form for your records by pressing the button below