Participant Information Sheet: Coping with Stress at Work

The purpose of the study

The purpose of this study is to examine how people manage the demands of their work. This study is being conducted by Aislin Harper, as part of the requirements for the Masters of Organisational Psychology degree at the University of Queensland, under the supervision of Dr Stacey Parker.

Participation and withdrawal

Participation in this study is completely voluntary and you are free to withdraw from this study at any time without prejudice or penalty. If you wish to withdraw, simply stop completing the daily surveys. If you wish to stop receiving the email reminders to complete the survey, please email the researcher (at aislin.harper@uqconect.edu.au) with your request and you will be removed immediately. If you do withdraw from the study, the surveys that you have completed to that point will be deleted and will not be included in the study.

What is involved?

Participants are asked to fill out 3 daily surveys about their daily work stress, coping and emotions at 3 different time points through a workday for 2 weeks (11am, 2 pm and 4 pm). Each survey will take a maximum of 3 minutes each (approximately 10 minutes per day for all 3). Participants will also be required to fill out an initial introductory survey (taking less than 10 minutes), which asks basic demographic information and other general information about your work and life.

As an incentive to participating, you will go into the draw to win one of two, $250 gift cards, receive a brief overview of your results with a provisional psychologist and some stress management tips developed by psychologists. In addition, if you are interested you can request a summary of the study findings.

Risks

Participation in this study should involve no physical or mental discomfort, and no risks beyond those of everyday living. If, however, you should find any question or procedure to be invasive or offensive, you are free to omit answering or participating in that aspect of the study.

Confidentiality and security of data

All data collected in this study will be stored confidentially. Only members of the research team will have access to the data. Initially, we will require your name and email address so we can set you up to receive the daily surveys. During this process, you will create a Unique Code Identifier which will be used to link each of your surveys. Your email and name will not be stored with your survey data, and as such, can only be identified by the Unique Code Identifier you create. Your data will be kept strictly confidential, and once matched, the codes will be removed. You do not have to take advantage of the feedback if you don't want to, at which point we will remove your Unique Code Identifier and store your data confidentially. The data you provide will only be used for the specific research purposes of this study.

Ethics clearance and contacts

This study has been cleared in accordance with the ethical review processes of the University of Queensland and within the guidelines of the National Statement on Ethical Conduct in Human Research. You are, of course, free to discuss your participation with project staff (contactable on: 0407 686 993).

If you would like to speak to an officer of the University not involved in the study, you may contact one of the School of Psychology Ethics Review Officers: Thomas Suddendorf (tsuddend@psy.uq.edu.au, Phone: 3365 8341), Jeanie Sheffield (jeanie@psy.uq.edu.au, Phone: 3365 6690), or Alex Haslam (uqshasla@uq.edu.au, Phone: 3346 7345) or Julie Henry(julie.henry@uq.edu.au, Phone: 3365 6737). Alternatively, you may leave a message with the School of Psychology Ethics Coordinator, Danico Jones at 3365 6448 for an ethics officer to contact you, or you may contact the University of Queensland Ethics Officer on 3365 3924, e-mail: humanethics@research.uq.edu.au.

If you would like to learn the outcome of the study in which you are participating, you can contact me at the email above after 20 November 2015, and I will send you an Abstract of the study findings. Thank you for your participation in this study.

Aislin Harper

BPsySc(Hons)

Provisional Psychologist

MPsychOrg Candidate

School of Psychology

The University of Queensland

aislin.harper@uqconnect.edu.au

Dr Stacey Parker

Centre for Organisational Psychology

The University of Queensland

s.parker@psy.uq.edu.au