In this blog post, we will tell you about our second meeting with our steering group.
This meeting had two main goals:
- To discuss how the information sheets and consent forms could be improved and made more accessible.
- To share ideas about the survey questions and what we could add to them.
What we learnt – ethics
In the first half of the meeting, we discussed the information sheets and consent forms that will be given to survey and interview participants. Specifically, we wanted to know whether these documents made it clear what study participants would be asked to do and how their data would be used.
From the discussion, we found that the information sheets and consent forms could be overwhelming to read, due to the length and the technical language. We followed the steering group’s input on how to make the documents easier to read, for example by adding in more paragraph breaks and explaining what any technical terminology meant.
We also received some constructive suggestions about extra information we could add. For example, we have included clarification about why we have a withdrawal deadline, who the Wellcome Trust are, and that interview participants can have their cameras off even if they choose a video call.
What we learnt – surveys
In the second half of the meeting, we discussed a selection of survey questions. Here, we received some positive feedback about the clarity and directness of the survey questions, as well as some excellent suggestions for questions or answers that we could add.
For example, Georgie suggested that we could add ‘my friends or peer groups use it’ as an additional option for the question about why people use certain social media platforms. In addition, we wanted advice for how we could better accommodate alexithymia (difficulty identifying or naming emotions) in our question about how people feel when using social media to engage their interests. Joseph recommended that we change ‘I don’t know’ to ‘I don’t know how I feel’ to make it clearer this is a valid option, as well as to add a ‘none of the above’ option.
Finally, we had a stimulating discussion about how our communication styles change when the topic is about our specific interests. Here, Hannah noted that she becomes ‘much more interactive’ when talking about her interests and that her posts are ‘longer with more detailed language.’ Following this discussion, we were able to come up with some potential answers for a question about this issue.
What happens next?
As a result of this meeting, we have rewritten the information sheets and consent forms to be simpler and easier to read, while also clarifying important details. We hope that these changes will make the information sheets and consent forms easier to understand and provide the right amount of information, so that participants will be able to make an informed choice about taking part without feeling overwhelmed. We’ve also rewritten some of our survey questions to be less wordy and incorporated many of the suggested revisions and new ideas.
Our next meeting will take place in May. In this meeting, we will share some of our initial survey findings and discuss the next stage of data collection: interviews.
