Participants for a Study

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Hello All!

We are currently looking for participants for a study about issues related to autism.
TITLE OF STUDY:
Choice making related to challenging behaviors as they related to clinical issues

INVESTIGATOR:
Mark R. Dixon, Alyssa Wilson, Seth Whiting; Rehabilitation Institute, Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, IL, 62901

PURPOSE:
You are being asked to participate in a research study. The purpose of this voluntary study is to investigate preferences in regard to a variety of everyday life decisions including administering various consequences to peers or students in a classroom, having a child with disabilities, dealing with problem behaviors of family/friends/loved ones, etc.

SUBJECTS:
You have been asked to participate because you are a member of an online autism-themed forum and have experience with people with autism spectrum disorders.

PROCEDURES:
If you choose to voluntarily participate, you will first be asked to fill out a demographic questionnaire. Then you will be asked a series of questions that will pose hypothetical situations. You will be asked to choose between a probabilistic choice and a certain choice related daily life situations. None of your answers will be shared with your employers or any other outside party, and participation in this study will not affect your employment or enrollment in services in any way.

CONFIDENTIALITY:
Your identity will be protected to the extent allowed by the law. You will not be personally identified in any reports or publications that may result from this study. Your data will be assigned a random subject number. Therefore, no one will know your name or your identity. All records of your responses will be destroyed within two years of the completion of the study. All information collected will be recorded on a coding sheet and kept in a locked cabinet or password-protected computer file. Only members of the research project will have access to either coding sheets.

RISKS:
There are no known risks from participating in this experiment.

BENEFITS:
The information obtained in this study will help us to understand choice making related to various clinical issues.

RIGHT TO REFUSE OR WITHDRAW:
You may refuse to participate or withdraw from the project at any time without penalty.

QUESTIONS:
If you have any questions please contact Alyssa Wilson., Rehabilitation Institute, Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, IL 62901, email: [email protected], or contact Mark Dixon via email at [email protected].

So, how are people supposed to answer the questions for the study?

Is this just a questionnaire, if so I'll participate.

I hope this is not meant to be a legitimate study cause it seems rather unprofessional to search for participants off of a forum. If its just for a school project, then its probably not a problem.

I've seen legitimate studies search for participants off of a forum before. They tend to be ones where they can take into account the self-selecting method of the people answering questions, and don't work for everything, but are done. (Also, they tend to not limit themselves to forums).

Could you elaborate on how long the entire process takes?

This is kind of problematic, you know? You're using convenience sampling, for one thing; how are you going to generalize to anything other than "WP users who like taking surveys"?

I guess if this is just a pilot study that'd make sense, but--just be careful about your experimental design, mkay?

I'd love to participate, as long as we don't have to be 18 or older

Yeah, no problem here; I can do it if it's just a survey thingy. But still, watch your sampling strategy. Maybe a better idea to hook up with a psych clinic and get your autistic folks that way--so you could be assured of getting a group of people from the population of "autistic people under treatment for autism", which is probably more relevant, though you wouldn't be getting the group that currently needs no treatment or can't access it... hmm.

Yeah, sorry, I'm a psych major currently taking research methods class; can you tell?