You are invited to participate in a research study. This information sheet provides you with information about the research study. The Principal Investigator (the person in charge of this research) or her representative will also describe this research to you and answer all of your questions. Read the information below and ask questions about anything you don’t understand before deciding whether or not to take part.
At this step, you have completed the screening survey and you have qualified for the study. At this point, you are being asked to install this mobile application that should replace your regular use of Instagram. You will be asked to use this application as normal for the next three weeks. At the end of the three weeks, you will complete one final survey asking you about your social media usage habits and your self-appraisal once again. At end of the survey, you will be reminded to delete this app and revoke permission for PI to continue to follow you from their Instagram account, for those whose profiles are set to private.
Some research designs require that the full extent of the study not be explained prior to participation. Although we have described the general nature of the tasks that you will be asked to perform, the full intent of the study will not be explained to you until after the completion of the final survey as described above. At that time, we will provide you with a full debriefing which will include an explanation of the hypothesis that was tested and other relevant background information pertaining to the study. You will also be given an opportunity to ask any questions you have about the hypothesis and the procedures used in the study.
Your Instagram handle will be sent a follow request. If you allow the PI or Research Assistant to follow your social media account, your posts will be used as data to ensure compliance and measure the efficacy of the study. The social media data will be collected for only those individuals who consent to allowing the PI or Research Assistant to follow their Instagram accounts. Irrespective of this decision, you are free to participate in the experiment and will receive reimbursement if you successfully complete all the surveys.
If you are eligible for the study (based on your citizenship, age, and your frequency of visiting Instagram or Twitter), you will be randomly assigned to different experimental conditions involving different user experiences of Instagram and Twitter. At no point will any user actions taken outside the use of this app be collected by the researchers. At no point would the researchers have access to any private data, including but not limited to the passwords they may type to log into the social media platforms. Only the browser tracking cookies and HTTP requests generated through the course of your normal use of Twitter or Instagram are collected through the mobile application.
At the end of two weeks, voluntary feedback will be collected through a reminder email sent to your designated email address. At the end of the three weeks, you will be emailed with a link to the final survey, which will ask them questions that are similar to the screening survey. At the end of the survey, you will be reminded to delete the third party app and revoke permission from the PI to continue to follow you in their Instagram or Twitter accounts for those whose profiles are set to private.
Over the course of three weeks, the browser tracking cookies and HTTP requests generated by Instagram and Twitter about your use of their websites will be collected. These include information about the posts you have viewed on social media and whether you liked or commented on them, including the id, caption, follower, following, and number of posts of the author of the posts viewed. Participants can optionally allow the PI to follow their Instagram or Twitter accounts. Alternatively, their profiles may be public and therefore accessible by the PI. In these two cases, data for participants’ social media posts stretching as far back as six months prior to, during, and one month after the experiment will be collected using Python code and by manual profile inspection after receiving informed consent. The post information will include post text, timestamp of post, multimedia message of the post including hashtags and mentions, the visual content (photo), and the number of likes and comments on the post. This information will be used to create quantitative measures about posting behaviour and validate the efficacy of the treatment. The study will end at this point.
For the full Participation and Consent Sheet, please click here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/nccjfzw0k6y34el/Appendix%20B%20PIS%20and%20Consent_quickgram_students%20aug%2025.pdf?dl=0