Welcome to the FAQ page of the study

1. Who are you?

We are technical researchers at the Department of Computer Science & Engineering, University of Minnesota, teaming up with CaringBridge to study expressive writing. Here are personal websites of researchers, Haiwei Ma and Svetlana Yarosh.

2. What is the study about?

CaringBridge offers patients and caregivers compassionate ways to write and share their health journeys and get support. We want to understand if writing journal updates has any influence on journal authors’ health and validate a quantitative measure of if a journal update is expressive writing. Once validated, the quantitative measure will be helpful to both research community to conduct future expressive writing research and CaringBridge to improve users’ writing experience.

3. Who are eligible for the study?

To qualify for the study, you must be a primary author or a co-author on a CaringBridge site for yourself or someone else, have published at least one journal update on CaringBridge in the prior seven days, and be 18 or older.

4. How long will the recruitment be open?

We estimate to run the recruitment for about a month. As long as you see the recruitment banner on CaringBridge, you are able to participate.

5. What is required of me if I decide to participate?

The study lasts for 31 days and has three parts.

You will first complete a 15-minute pre-study survey to provide your contact, demographic, and psychophysical information (assessed by psychology instruments), after you consent to participate.
For the next 31 days, you need to allow researchers to follow your CaringBridge site and send you survey requests via email or SMS text based on your preference. Each time you publish a journal update on CaringBridge, you will be asked to fill in a brief (1 minute) survey regarding your thoughts.
On the 31st day, you will be asked to complete a 10-minute post-study survey regarding your psychophysical state. You will also be given the opportunity to receive a $15 Amazon Digital gift card and the opportunity to receive the study results when published in around June, 2022.

6. Is my participation voluntary? Can I leave the study if I do not want to continue?

Of course! Participation in this study is voluntary. Your decision whether or not to participate will not affect your current or future relations with the University of Minnesota or CaringBridge. You may discontinue participation at any time. Your decision to discontinue participation will not affect your current or future relations with the University of Minnesota or CaringBridge. You can leave the study without notifying us. If you want to notify us, you can email to Haiwei Ma at maxxx979@umn.edu or text to his phone 651-239-6957, or clicking the “leave the study” link in the emails or SMS texts you received.

7. What if I miss a survey?

Depending on the type of the survey you miss, there will be different consequences.

You can’t miss the first, pre-study survey, because your 31-day study period begins only after you complete it.
It is okay to miss some brief surveys regarding your thoughts reflected in the journal updates you published during the study period. However, we encourage you to complete the brief surveys as many as possible, because they are very short (1 min each) and the quantitative measure of expressive writing relies on these inputs with more data yielding better results.
You can’t miss the final, post-study survey. You have to fill it in to complete the study and get your compensation.

8. Will my information be safe and secure?

The records of this study will be kept private. In any sort of report we might publish, we will not include any information that will make it possible to identify a subject. Research records will be stored securely and only researchers will have access to the records.

9. Are there any risks to participation?

Since some survey questions are related to your psychophysical states, the primary risk associated with participation may be difficult or challenging emotions that arise during the course of answering questions.

10. Are there any benefits to participation?

You may feel a sense of contribution to helping the community and advancing the science.

11. What results will my participation yield?

Your valued input will result in a publication in a research conference and you can opt in to receive an email notification about study results in a lay-accessible blog post in around June, 2022.

12. Is there any compensation for my participation?

Yes! After completing the study (i.e., completing the final post-study survey), you will receive a message with a link to a survey, where you can provide the email address or phone number to receive the $15 Amazon digital gift card.

13. What if I do not want to receive the compensation?

You can simply ignore the message you receive regarding compensation after you complete the study or explicitly say no in the survey in that message.

14. What if I have questions, concerns, or complaints about the research?

You are encouraged to contact Haiwei Ma by emailing to maxxx979@umn.edu or texting 651-239-6957 for support and help.

This research has been reviewed and approved by an IRB within the Human Research Protections Program (HRPP). To share feedback privately with the HRPP about your research experience, call the Research Participants’ Advocate Line at 612-625-1650 (Toll Free: 1-888-224-8636) or go to z.umn.edu/participants. You are encouraged to contact the HRPP if:

Your questions, concerns, or complaints are not being answered by the research team.
You cannot reach the research team.
You want to talk to someone besides the research team.
You have questions about your rights as a research participant.
You want to get information or provide input about this research.

You can download it here.